Page:A Plea for the Middle Classes.djvu/11

 be able to resist the form into which the world around moulds them. Their life and death is a sad spectacle, and yet infinitely better than could have been expected; but they go to their graves with the bitter (though silent) complaint, "No man cared for my soul." You will think this, perhaps, an exaggeration, but it is not so. The middle classes may be as virtuous as any other class, and indeed, as being shielded from the dangers of the two extremes, by far the most virtuous, (though this now is very doubtful,) yet the Church must ever feel herself open to reproach, while she leaves untrained and uninstructed the most numerous, influential and best disposed body of the community; and till she provides some remedy whereby they may be retained as her dutiful, and intelligent, and faithful sons

But an argument of another kind, and that of great force and importance, is this. That till the Church do educate and train up the middle classes, she can never effectually educate the poor. All national and parochial schools must to a great extent prove unsuccessful; our money, labour, and anxiety be, in a great measure, thrown away, so long as we seek to form religious principles in the minds of the poor, while we neglect their masters. For with us the boys in the national schools remain not more than three or four years on an average, during which time we must teach them much that is to them unpleasant to learn, and but little that is agreeable, or that will attach them to us; while with their masters they spend a whole life, hear their opinions on every subject, watch their habits and modes of life, and in time come to think as they think, and to make common cause with them in their unfriendly feeling towards the Church, and the more sacred institutions of the State. And what else was to be expected? that which we hear every day asserted as true, we soon believe to be so, in spite of the best of intentions: but the poor man knows no higher authority than his master for facts or faith; he is so deeply affected by what his master does, and how he acts, that it is to him of oracular dignity. Probably, if you could overhear the conversation of a labourer and his wife, or of fellow workmen, more than one half of their talk would be about their employers. I must then think that this is a great and important argument why the Church should use every effort to secure the training of the youth of a class that has such power for good or evil. But at present how are the mass of the masters qualified to influence beneficially those large