our successors in our course towards the noble goal
which lies before mankind.

A LIBERAL EDUCATION [49]

The business which the South London Working Men's College has undertaken
is a great work; indeed, I might say, that Education, with which that
college proposes to grapple, is the greatest work of all those which lie
ready to a man's hand just at present.

And, at length, this fact is becoming generally recognised. You
cannot go anywhere without hearing a buzz of more or less confused and
contradictory talk on this subject--nor can you fail to notice that,
in one point at any rate, there is a very decided advance upon like
discussions in former days. Nobody outside the agricultural interest now
dares to say that education is a bad thing. If any representative of the
once large and powerful party, which, in former days, proclaimed this
opinion, still exists in the semi-fossil state, he keeps his thoughts
to himself. In fact, there is a chorus of voices, almost distressing in
their harmony, raised in favour of the doctrine that education is
the great panacea for human troubles, and that, if the country is not
shortly to go to the dogs, everybody must be educated.

The politicians tell us, "You must educate the masses because they are
going to be masters." The clergy join in the cry for education, for they
affirm that the people are drifting away from church and chapel into
the broadest infidelity. The manufacturers and the capitalists swell
the chorus lustily. They declare that ignorance makes bad workmen; that
England will soon be unable to turn out cotton goods, or steam engines,
cheaper than other people; and then, Ichabod! Ichabod![50] the glory
will be departed from us. And a few voices are lifted up in favour of
the doctrine that the masses should be educated because they are men and
women with unlimited capacities of being, doing, and suffering, and that
it is as true now, as it ever was, that the people perish for lack of
knowledge.

These members of the minority, with whom I confess I have a good deal of
sympathy, are doubtful whether any of the other reasons urged in favour
of the education of the people are of much value--whether, indeed, some
of them are based upon either wise or noble grounds of action. They
question if it be wise to tell people that you will do for them, out
of fear of their power, what you have left undone, so long as your only
motive was compassion for their weakness and t