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o take with Lumpington and Hittall," says Arnold. "Then your compulsory education is a most abominable liberty to take with Diggs' boys," retorted Arminius.... "Oh, but," I answered, "to live at all, even at the lowest stage of human life, a man needs instruction." "Well," returns Arminius, "and to administer at all, even at the lowest stage of public administration, a man needs instruction." "_We have never found it so_," I said. The same argument was urged, in a graver fashion, in _Schools and Universities of the Continent_. "In the view of the English friends of compulsory education, the educated and intelligent Middle and Upper Classes amongst us are to confer the boon of compulsory education upon the ignorant lower class, which needs it while they do not. But, on the Continent, instruction is obligatory for Lower, Middle, and Upper Class alike. I doubt whether our educated and intelligent classes are at all prepared for this. I have an acquaintance in easy circumstances, of distinguished connexions, living in a fashionable part of London, who, like many other people, deals rather easily with his son's schooling. Sometimes the boy is at school, then for months together he is away from school, and taught, so far as he is taught, by his father and mother at home. He is not the least an invalid, but it pleases his father and mother to bring him up in this manner. Now, I imagine, no English friends of compulsory education dream of dealing with such a defaulter as this, and certainly his father, who perhaps is himself a friend of compulsory education for the working classes, would be astounded to find his education of his own son interfered with. But, if my worthy acquaintance lived in Switzerland or Germany, he would be dealt with as follows. I speak with the school-law of Canton Neufchatel, immediately under my eyes, but the regulations on this matter are substantially the same in all the states of Germany and of German Switzerland. The Municipal Education Committee of the district where my acquaintance lived would address a summons to him, informing him that a comparison of the school-rolls of their district with the municipal list of children of school-age, showed his son not to be at school; and requiring him, in consequence, to appear before the Municipal Committee at a place and time named, and there to satisfy them, either that his son did attend some public school, or that, if privately taught, he was ta
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