y
cumbrous, and the method costly in comparison. I hold that we ought not to
set up this machinery, in order to create three infant schools, where all
the other wants of some 2000 people are already provided for.

Views On A Classical Education

_Page __312_

_Mr. Gladstone to Lord Lyttelton_

_Penmaenmawr, Aug. 29, 1861._---Thanks for the brief notice which you
recently took of the Public Schools Commission. I was heartily glad to
hear that you had formed a drastic set of questions. I take the deepest
interest in the object of the commission, and I have full confidence in
its members and organs; and at all times I shall be very glad to hear what
you are doing. Meantime I cannot help giving you, to be taken for what it
is worth, the sum of my own thoughts upon the subject.... The _low_
utilitarian argument in matter of education, for giving it what is termed
a practical direction, is so plausible that I think we may on the whole be
thankful that the instincts of the country have resisted what in argument
it has been ill able to confute. We still hold by the classical training
as the basis of a liberal education; parents dispose of their children in
early youth accordingly; but if they were asked why they did so, it is
probable they would give lamentably weak or unworthy reasons for it, such
for example as that the public schools and universities open the way to
desirable acquaintance and what is termed "good society." Your commission
will not I presume be able to pass by this question, but will have to look
it in the face; and to proceed either upon a distinct affirmative, or a
substantial negative, of the proposition that the classical training is
the proper basis of a liberal education. I hope you will hold by
affirmation and reject negation.

But the reason why I trouble you upon the subject is this, that I think
the friends of this principle have usually rather blinked the discussion,
and have been content with making terms of compromise by way of buying off
the adversary, which might be in themselves reasonable unless they were
taken as mere instalments of a transaction intended in the long run to
swallow up the principle itself. What I feel is that the relation of pure
science, natural science, modern languages, modern history, and the rest
of the old classical training ought to be founded on a principle and ought
not to be treated simply as importunate creditors, that take a shilling in
the L to-day,