agricultural ones where the tillers are not proprietors. If in
Scotland the children are sent to school, where the parents have not the
advantage I have been speaking of, it is chiefly because their labour
can be turned to no account at home. Send among them manufacturers, or
farmers on a large scale, and you may indeed substitute Sunday-schools
or other modes of instructing them; but the ordinary parish schools will
be neglected. The influence of our schools in this neighbourhood can
never be understood, if this, their connection with the state of landed
property, be overlooked. In fact, that influence is not striking. The
people are not habitually religious, in the common sense of the word,
much less godly. The effect of their schooling is chiefly seen by the
activity with which the young persons emigrate, and the success
attending it; and at home, by a general orderliness and gravity, with
habits of independence and self-respect: nothing obsequious or fawning
is ever to be seen amongst them.

It may be added, that this ability (from the two causes, land and
schools) of giving their children instruction contributes to spread a
respect for scholarship through the country. If in any family one of the
children should be quicker at his book, or fonder of it than others, he
is often marked out in consequence for the profession of a clergyman.
This (before the mercantile or manufacturing employments held out such
flattering hopes) very generally happened; so that the schools of the
North were the great nurseries of curates, several of whom got forward
in their profession, some with and others without the help of a
university education; and, in all instances, such connection of families
(all the members of which lived in the humblest and plainest manner,
working with their own hands as labourers) with a learned and dignified
profession, assisted (and still does, though in a less degree) not a
little to elevate their feelings, and conferred importance on them in
their own eyes. But I must stop, my dear Wrangham. Begin your education
at the top of society; let the head go in the right course, and the tail
will follow. But what can you expect of national education conducted by
a government which for twenty years resisted the abolition of the slave
trade, and annually debauches the morals of the people by every possible
device? holding out temptation with one hand, and scourging with the
other. The distilleries and lotteries are