gested a national system, but the
times were not ripe. Meanwhile the controversy became furious. The
_Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly_ thundered on opposite sides. Immense
importance was attached by both parties to the scheme devised by Bell,
and partly adopted by Lancaster. The war involved a personal element
and the charges of plagiarism which give spice to a popular
controversy. All parties, and certainly the Utilitarians, strangely
exaggerated the value of the new method. They regarded the proposal
that children should be partly taught by other children instead of
being wholly taught by adults as a kind of scientific discovery which
would enormously simplify and cheapen education. Believers in the
'Panopticon' saw in it another patent method of raising the general
level of intelligence. But the real question was between church and
dissent. Was the church catechism to be imposed or not? This, as we
have seen, was the occasion of Bentham's assault upon church and
catechism. On the other side, Bell's claims were supported with
enthusiasm by all the Tories, and by such men as Southey and
Coleridge. Southey, who had defended Bell in the _Quarterly_,[12]
undertook to be Bell's biographer[13] and literary executor. Coleridge
was so vehement in the cause that when lecturing upon 'Romeo and
Juliet' in 1811, he plunged by way of exordium into an assault upon
Lancaster's modes of punishment.[14] De Quincey testifies that he
became a positive bore upon Bell's virtues. In 1812 Lancaster had got
deeply into debt to the trustees of the Society, who included besides
Allen, Joseph Fox--a 'shallow, gloomy bigot' according to Place--and
some other Quakers. Lancaster resented their control, and in 1812 made
over his Borough Road school to them, and set up one of his own at
Tooting. They continued, however, to employ him, and in 1813 formed
themselves into the 'British and Foreign' School Society. Place had
known Lancaster from 1804, and Mill had supported him in the press.
They both became members of the committee, though Place took the most
active part. He makes many grave charges against Lancaster, whom he
regarded as hopelessly flighty and impracticable, if not worse.
Ultimately in 1814 Lancaster resigned his position, and naturally
retorted that Place was an infidel. Place, meanwhile, was ill at ease
with the 'gloomy bigot,' as he calls Fox. After many quarrels, Fox
succeeded in getting the upper hand, and Place finally withdrew from