Page:A charge delivered at the ordinary visitation of the archdeaconry of Chichester in July, 1843.djvu/25

21 its funds, and training institutions, schools of all sorts, the aggregate number of its teachers and scholars, we must be thankfully conscious of possessing a material for the work of education, inadequate indeed to the wants of the people, but still of a most vigorous and efficient kind, capable of indefinite extension and improvement; and this organized system is perpetually extending itself, perpetually thrusting its roots more deeply and widely into the lowest of the people.

If this has been the growth of four years, what may not the next ten produce? We are but in the rudiments of the undertaking. A few years ago we were battling objections against educating the people at all. That point is gained: but men act slowly upon matters where they have been rather silenced than convinced. The full effect of this is to be seen, when they to whom the charge of property has been intrusted begin to fulfil their high duties towards those who with property are also intrusted to their care. They hold a wardship of their fellow-men: and to these, rather than to the Legislature, we ought to look.

Now it is at this stage of the work that a new feature has shown itself. Her Majesty's present advisers, under a deep sense of the terrific state of the factory population, introduced a measure to provide a system of education for those districts. I shall not refer to the details of that measure; but if ever a measure was conceived with honest and