Glances at Europe. Greeley Horace
BRITISH PROGRESS.
London, Thursday, May 15, 1851.
Apart from the Great Exhibition, this is a season of intellectual activity in London. Parliament is (languidly) in session; the Aristocracy are in town; the Queen is lavishly dispensing the magnificent hospitalities of Royalty to those of the privileged caste who are invited to share them; and the several Religious and Philanthropic Societies, whether of the City or the Kingdom, are generally holding their Anniversaries, keeping Exeter Hall in blast almost night and day. I propose to give a first hasty glance at intellectual and general progress in Great Britain, leaving the subject to be more fully and thoroughly treated after I shall have made myself more conversant with the facts in the case.
A spirit of active and generous philanthropy is widely prevalent in this country. While the British pay more in taxes for the support of Priests and Paupers than any other people on earth, they at the same time give more for Religious and Philanthropic purposes. Their munificence is not always well guided; but on the whole very much is accomplished by it in the way of diffusing Christianity and diminishing Human Misery. But I will speak more specifically.
The Religious Anniversaries have mainly been held, but few or none of them are reported—indeed, they are scarcely alluded to—in the Daily press, whose vaunted superiority over American journals in the matter of Reporting amounts practically to this—that the debates in Parliament are here reported verbatim, and again presented in a condensed form under the Editorial head of each paper, while scarcely anything else (beside Court doings) is reported at all. I am sure this is consistent neither with reason nor with the public taste—that if the Parliamentary debates were condensed one-half, and the space so saved devoted to reports of the most interesting Public Meetings, Lectures, &c., after the New-York fashion, the popular interest in the daily papers would become wider and deeper, and their usefulness as aids to General Education would be largely increased. To a great majority of the reading class, even here, political discussions—and especially of questions so trite and so unimportant as those which mainly engross the attention of Parliament—are of quite subordinate interest; and I think less than one reader in four ever peruses any more of these debates than is given in the Editorial synopsis, leaving the verbatim report a sheer waste of costly print and paper.—I believe, however, that in the aggregate, the collections of the last year for Religious purposes have just about equaled the average of the preceding two or three years; some Societies having received less, others more. I think the public interest in comprehensive Religious and Philanthropic efforts does not diminish.
For Popular Education, there is much doing in this Country, but in a disjointed, expensive, inefficient manner. Instead of one all-pervading, straight-forward, State-directed system, there are three or four in operation, necessarily conflicting with and damaging each other. And yet a vast majority really desire the Education of All, and are willing to pay for it. John Bull is good at paying taxes, wherein he has had large experience; and if he grumbles a little now and then at their amount as oppressive, it is only because he takes pleasure in grumbling, and this seems to afford him a good excuse for it. He would not be deprived of it if he could: witness the discussions of the Income Tax, which every body denounces while no one justifies it abstractly; and yet it is always upheld, and I presume always will be. If the question could now be put to a direct vote, even of the tax-payers alone—"Shall or shall not a system of Common School Education for the United Kingdoms be maintained by a National Tax?"—I believe Free Schools would be triumphant. Even if such a system were matured, put in operation, and to be sustained by Voluntary Contributions alone or left to perish, I should not despair of the result.
But there is a lion in the path, in the shape of the Priesthood of the Established Church, who insist that the children shall be indoctrinated in the dogmas of their creed, or there shall be no State system of Common Schools; and, behind these, stand the Roman Catholic Clergy, who virtually make a similar demand with regard to the children of Catholics. The unreasonableness, as well as the ruinous effects of these demands, is already palpable on our side of the Atlantic. If, when our City was meditating the Croton Water Works, the Episcopal and Catholic Priesthood had each insisted that those works should be consecrated by their own Hierarchy and by none other, or, in default of this, we should have no water-works at all, the case would be substantially parallel to this. Or if there were in some city a hundred children, whose parents were of diverse creeds, all blind with cataract, whom it was practicable to cure altogether, but not separately, and these rival Priesthoods were respectively to insist—"They shall be taught our Creed and Catechism, and no other, while the operation is going on, or there shall be no operation and no cure," that case would not be materially diverse from this. In vain does the advocate of Light say to them, "Pray, let us give the children the inestimable blessing of sight, and then you may teach your creed and catechism to all whom you can persuade to learn them," they will have the closed eyes opened according to Loyola or to Laud, or not opened at all! Do they not provoke us to say that their insisting on an impossible, a suicidal condition, is but a cloak, a blind, a fetch, and that their real object is to keep the multitude in darkness? I am thankful that we have few clergymen in America who manifest a spirit akin to that which to this day deprives half the children of these Kingdoms of any considerable school education whatever.
I think nothing unsusceptible of mathematical demonstration, can be clearer than the imperative necessity of Universal Education, as a matter simply of Public Economy. In these densely peopled islands, where service is cheap, and where many persons qualified to teach are maintaining a precarious struggle for subsistence, a system of General Education need not cost half so much as in the United States, while wealth is so concentrated that taxes bear less hardly here, in proportion to their amount, than with us. Every dollar judiciously spent on the education of poor children, would be more than saved in the diminution of the annual cost of pauperism and crime, while the intellectual and industrial capacity of the people would be vastly increased by it. I do not see how even Clerical bigotry, formidable as it deplorably is, can long resist this consideration among a people so thrifty and saving, as are in the main the wielders of political power in this country.
Political Reforms move slowly here. Mr. Hume's motion for Household Suffrage, Vote by Ballot, Triennial Parliaments, &c. was denied a consideration, night before last, by the concerted absence from the House of nearly all the members—only twenty-one appearing when forty (out of over six hundred) are required to constitute a quorum. So the subject lost its place as a set motion, and probably will not come up again this Session. The Ministry opposed its consideration now, promising themselves to bring forward a measure for the Extension of the Franchise next Session, when it is very unlikely that they will be in a position to bring forward anything. It seems to me that the current sets strongly against their continuance in office, and that, between the hearty Reformers on one side and the out-spoken Conservatives on the other, they must soon surrender their semblance of power. Still, they are skillful in playing off one extreme against another, and may thus endure or be endured a year longer; but the probability is against this. To my mind, it seems clear that their retirement is essential to the prosecution of Liberal Reforms. So long as they remain in power, they will do, in the way of the People's Enfranchisement, as near nought as possible.
(——"Nothing could live
Twixt that and silence.")
Their successors, the avowed Conservatives, will of course do nothing; but they cannot hold power long in the Britain of to-day; and whoever shall succeed them must come in on a popular tide and on the strength of pledges to specific and comprehensive Reforms which cannot well be evaded. Slow work, say you? Well, there is no quicker practicable. When the Tories shall have been in once more and gone out again, there will be another great forward movement like the Reform Bill, and I think not till then, unless the Continent shall meantime be convulsed by the throes of a general Revolution.
I