far more undivided attention, and not
less capacity, than he had.

Lord Lansdowne could not introduce a more comprehensive plan, but he
admitted the impossibility of his so doing, because society was divided
into two great classes, churchmen and dissenters, who loved education
much, but controversy more. Never was a sentence uttered in parliament
where the religious feelings and opinions of the people were concerned,
even by Lord Brougham himself, more unfounded in fact. The assertion was
certainly true of a great many, both churchmen and dissenters, but there
was a far greater number of each who loved education very much, and who
did not regard controversy with any favour--men of strong conscientious
principles, and of deep and earnest piety, who were not prepared
to sacrifice their opinions to any government, or to any view of
expediency, whatever the end proposed.

Instead of making these classes the object of his constant sneers, Lord
Brougham would have rendered more service to his country, and have been
more just, had he honoured their scruples, and devoted himself to the
production of some scheme which, whether successful or not in passing
the legislature, would have laid the basis of an ultimate acceptance by
its respect for the religious rights of all. No plan of education
will ever gain acceptance in England, so long as there is freedom of
discussion and religious liberty, which recognises either a sectarian or
a state ascendancy in education. As the Bishop of Oxford once said, as
to the feasibility of a compulsory system of education--"We are too
free a people for such a scheme ever to be carried out amongst us."
Carlisle showed his philosophy and accuracy of historical knowledge
when he described the Roundheads and Cavaliers as honest, earnest men,--
heroes, because nobly true to the principles they had espoused, and
fearless of all consequences in their avowal; but that eloquent writer
showed, like Lord Brougham, his ignorance of the classes of men which,
in the present age, succeed to the opinions of Roundheads and Cavaliers,
when he declares that there are no such men in the England of to-day.
They are now as earnest and more numerous: let the same circumstances
call them forth and they will be found. A superior civilisation, a
clearer understanding of the principles of civil and religious
liberty, a more tolerant temper now prevail, but there is as much
conscientiousness still; and now as ever, in this