especially the other thing. We cannot have prosperous
Cotton-trades at the expense of keeping the Devil a partner in
them!"--

Bills enough, were the Corn-Law Abrogation Bill once passed, and a
Legislature willing! Nay this one Bill, which lies yet unenacted, a
right Education Bill, is not this of itself the sure parent of
innumerable wise Bills,--wise regulations, practical methods and
proposals, gradually ripening towards the state of Bills? To irradiate
with intelligence, that is to say, with order, arrangement and all
blessedness, the Chaotic, Unintelligent: how, except by educating,
_can_ you accomplish this? That thought, reflection, articulate
utterance and understanding be awakened in these individual million
heads, which are the atoms of your Chaos: there is no other way of
illuminating any Chaos! The sum-total of intelligence that is found in
it, determines the extent of order that is possible for your
Chaos,--the feasibility and rationality of what your Chaos will dimly
demand from you, and will gladly obey when proposed by you! It is an
exact equation; the one accurately measures the other.--If the whole
English People, during these 'twenty years of respite,' be not
educated, with at least schoolmaster's educating, a tremendous
responsibility, before God and men, will rest somewhere! How dare any
man, especially a man calling himself minister of God, stand up in any
Parliament or place, under any pretext or delusion, and for a day or
an hour forbid God's Light to come into the world, and bid the Devil's
Darkness continue in it one hour more! For all light and science,
under all shapes, in all degrees of perfection, is of God; all
darkness, nescience, is of the Enemy of God. 'The schoolmaster's creed
is somewhat awry?' Yes, I have found few creeds entirely correct; few
light-beams shining _white_, pure of admixture: but of all creeds and
religions now or ever before known, was not that of thoughtless
thriftless Animalism, of Distilled Gin, and Stupor and Despair,
unspeakably the least orthodox? We will exchange _it_ even with
Paganism, with Fetishism; and, on the whole, must exchange it with
something.

An effective 'Teaching Service' I do consider that there must be; some
Education Secretary, Captain-General of Teachers, who will actually
contrive to get us _taught_. Then again, why should there not be an
'Emigration Service,' and Secretary, with adjuncts, with funds,
forces, idle Navy-ships, and ever-inc