than an error of conscientiousness—a means mistaken for a purpose confessedly benevolent. But the man
guilty of such wicked malice to his fellow-men, knows perfectly well that he differs only in degree from a
large and powerful section of ministers of higher rank and authority in the church, and from men of
distinction and influence in both branches of the legislature, who are substantially as guilty as himself of hurling
similar imprecations against those who have merely opposed the exclusive claims of a particular party of
bigots to control the general civilisation of England. The late carping debate in the House of Lords on
the working of the Government scheme, and in awful deprecation of the success of Mr. Fox's scheme,
meant this if it meant anything. Well might Lord Brougham warn their lordships, that, in the conflict, Education
was falling to the ground "instead of winging its way through wind, and air, and mounting aloft to its
native skies."

A sober practical translation of that eloquent flight of his Lordship's happens to lie close at hand. Let us
take some very recent gaol returns presented to the House of Commons, in proof of the connection of ignorance
and crime, and of the responsibility of our legislature and platform-brawlers for the continuance of both. The
returns are alphabetical, and our examples shall be taken impartially from the four first letters of the alphabet.
Of a hundred and ninety-six prisoners at Abingdon, thirteen were in utter ignorance, and unable to repeat the
Lord's Prayer; fifty-two could not read; and eighty-three knew neither the Creed nor the Commandments. In
Bedford the great majority of the prisoners were ignorant, stupid, unconcerned, and unacquainted with the
commonest Scripture phrases. In the Berkshire County Gaol, out of six hundred and thirty-one prisoners,
two hundred and thirty-six were ignorant of the alphabet, while two hundred and four were uninstructed in
the first principles of the Christian faith, and ignorant even of the Saviour's name. The chaplain
observes in his report that children, or men still childish, had indeed learned to read and write, but had
not learned to think about or understand anything which they had been taught. That is in strict
consonance with the Sunday-school system which was described in our last summary, the ears had
heard, and the tongue had learned utterance, but the mind had received no idea, no impression.
Lamentable is it, proceeds this excellent man, that even the criminal population of a Christian land
should show a proportion of one-third strangers to the very simplest truths of religion. The report
of the Brecon chaplain is somewhat similar. He says that though the majority of prisoners can read
imperfectly, yet their education has been so defective that they have no notion of the bearing and
connection of one part of a sentence with another, or of the meaning of words of continual occurrence in
Scripture. Nine out of ten were utterly ignorant of the merest rudiments of Christianity; six out of ten
did not know whose son Jesus Christ was, nor wherefore he came into the world; and five out of ten did
not know the name of the Queen. In Buckinghamshire about one half of the prisoners could read and
write, and one fourth could read (without apparently understanding) easy passages of Scripture; but
another fourth were in complete ignorance, and this ignorance, the chaplain adds, had been uniformly
accompanied by the greatest depravity. In Cambridge, one of our highest seats of Christian learning, out of
two hundred and twenty-nine prisoners, only one hundred and forty were able to read, eighty-nine could not
read, sixty-one could not repeat the Lord's Prayer, and eighty-eight were ignorant of the Commandments
and the Creed. In Cornwall, out of six hundred and eighty-eight prisoners, three hundred and four could
neither read nor write, while one hundred and thirty-nine could not repeat the Lord's Prayer, and were
ignorant of the Saviour's name. Finally, in Dorset, out of six hundred and seventy-four prisoners, four
hundred and nine did not understand the meaning of the Lord's Prayer, and a hundred and nineteen were
entirely ignorant, one or two of the very name, and all of the work and mission, of the Redeemer.

Let the reader imagine the other twenty letters of the alphabet supplying cases yet more striking than
these, and measure the guilt of responsibility for obstructing education in England! Let him imagine how
far the curse of the great Apostle might indeed be found applicable to men, who, in place of grappling with
gigantic evils so directly claiming the application of their functions, are playing at little holy games of penance
and confession; are transforming the manly services and liturgy of our Protestant Church into something little
better than the incantations of a parcel of howling dervishes; and, learned in flowers, processions, genuflexions,
surplices, candles, altar-pieces, offertories, and singing men and boys, are only ignorant when the Gospel has
to be expounded, or the vital truths of Christianity enforced. Again, however, in justice it is to be said, that
such mummeries and follies could not exist for a day without countenance from the higher authorities. As
surely as Mr. Gorham would have been driven out of the church by the Bishop of Exeter, but for the prudent
control established at the Reformation; so surely are the men who have insulted the Reformation, such as
Mr. Bennet and Mr. Allies, only retained within the church by favor of the Bishop of London and the Bishop
of Oxford.

Yet the House of Lords, which desires No More education, is quite ready to raise the cry of More bishops!
Most vigorously was it shouted forth in the discussion on the Ecclesiastical Commission Bill, when, moderate
as the proposed provisions are for the appropriation of large surplus revenues to the succour of the poor
working clergy, nothing was so vehemently insisted upon as that such provisions would preclude the creation
of new bishoprics. With nothing but the wealthy "prizes" do their lordships sympathise. The clause
for lowering the emoluments of cathedral deans from fifteen hundred to a thousand a year was disabled, and
that for consolidating the episcopal with the common fund was thrown out altogether. Lord Stanley led the
opposition on this point, and frankly stated his objection to mixing the two funds. If they were not kept
apart, he said, the parochial clergy would have a plausible ground for complaining, that, in establishing a new
bishopric, funds were taken which might have been applied for the support of forty clergymen. This was
at least candid; and it is to be hoped will not be forgotten, either when the next appeal is made for a
plethoric bishop, or the next complaint for a starving curate. That the one class may be overpaid the other
must be stinted, it is thus plainly confessed; nor must forty working clergymen be simply satisfied now,
lest the chance should be run hereafter of undergorging one right reverend prelate. The Bishop of St.
Asaph completed the self-exposures of this memorable debate, by protesting he was convinced that no men
in the country worked harder than the bishops. They were, he affirmed, really the working clergy; and so
pathetic was the good man upon the subject, and upon the spiritual assistance for sundry places in his
diocese which his own straitened means and overburthened energies obliged him to forego, that one could
hardly be surprised if he originated a bill for relieving his episcopal brethren of at least the legislative portion
of their labours.