stance your opinion.

V

(M98) The same vigorous currents of national vitality that led to new
endeavours for the education of the poor, had drawn men to consider the
horrid chaos, the waste, and the abuses in the provision of education for
the directing classes beyond the poor. Grave problems of more kinds than
one came into view. The question, What is education? was nearly as hard to
answer as the question of which we have seen so much, What is a church?
The rival claims of old classical training and the acquisition of modern
knowledge were matters of vivacious contest. What is the true place of
classical learning in the human culture of our own age? Misused charitable
trusts, and endowments perverted by the fluctuations of time, by lethargy,
by selfishness, from the objects of pious founders, touched wakeful
jealousies in the privileged sect, and called into action that adoration
of the principle of property which insists upon applying all the rules of
individual ownership to what rightfully belongs to the community. Local
interests were very sensitive, and they were multitudinous. The battle was
severely fought, and it extended over several years, while commission upon
commission explored the issues.

In a highly interesting letter (1861) to Lord Lyttelton Mr. Gladstone set
out at length his views upon the issue between ancient and modern, between
literary training and scientific, between utilitarian education and
liberal. The reader will find this letter in an appendix, as well as one
to Sir Stafford Northcote.(195) While rationally conservative upon the
true basis of attainments in "that small proportion of the youth of any
country who are to become in the fullest sense educated men," he is
rationally liberal upon what the politics of the time made the burning
question of the sacrosanctity of endowments. "It is our habit in this
country," he said, "to treat private interests with an extravagant
tenderness. The truth is that all laxity and extravagance in dealing with
what in a large sense is certainly public property, approximates more or
less to dishonesty, or at the least lowers the moral tone of the persons
concerned."

The result of all this movement, of which it may perhaps be said that it
was mainly inspired and guided by a few men of superior energy and social
weight like Goldwin Smith, Temple, Jowett, Liddell, the active interest of
the classes immediately concerned being hardly more than middling