ing over the
nation, and charity becoming more cold, or the poor more numerous, it
was found necessary to make some legal provision for them. This might,
much more properly than charity schools, be called a new scheme;[65]
for, without question, the education of poor children was all along
taken care of by voluntary charities, more or less, but obliging us by
law to maintain the poor was new in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Yet,
because a change of circumstances made it necessary, its novelty was no
reason against it. Now, in that legal provision for the maintenance of
the poor, poor children must doubtless have had a part in common with
grown people. But this could never be sufficient for children, because
their case always requires more than mere maintenance; it requires that
they be educated in some proper manner. Wherever there are poor who want
to be maintained by charity, there must be poor children, who, besides
this, want to be educated by charity; and whenever there began to be
need of _legal_ provision for the _maintenance_ of the poor, there must
immediately have been need also of some _particular_ legal provision in
behalf of poor children for their _education_, this not being included
in what we call their maintenance."

[65] Bishop Butler is here answering the objections of some "people who
speak of charity schools as a new-invented scheme, and therefore to be
looked upon with suspicion; whereas it is no otherwise new than as the
occasion for it is so."

Not only is it the duty of society to provide _food_ for the _minds_ as
well as sustenance for the bodies of poor children, but their pecuniary
interests equally require it; for, as Butler remarks, "if they are not
trained up in the way they should go, they will certainly be trained up
in the way they should not go, and in all probability will persevere in
it, and become miserable themselves and mischievous to society, which,
in event, is worse, upon account of both, than if they had been exposed
to perish in their infancy."

I have already shown, by unquestionable testimony, that persons who
possess the greatest share in the stock of worldly goods are deeply
interested in the subject of popular education, as one of _mere
insurance_; "that the most effectual way of making insurance upon their
property would be to contribute from it enough to sustain an efficient
system of common school education, thereby educating the whole mass of
mind, and