Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/103

 marriage, became the universal rule. Heavy family responsibilities followed of course, and the cause of population-increase was everywhere ascendant. But against that one expense, formidable as it might be, there arose concurrently quite a host of economies, moral, social and material, every item of which was a distinct, although a varied kind of gain to society. And thus, for example, ere the twentieth century had run its course, our society was able to boast that two great social evils of the nineteenth had practically disappeared, namely, the public-house in its old familiar and ungainly aspect, and that heretofore supposed ineradicable feature of all society, which had appropriated to itself, par excellence, the title of "the social evil."

Although the State is the only parent possible to the whole national family, the State was long of apprehending, and duly undertaking, its educational duties as such. But towards the end of the nineteenth century this duty was at last begun, and a most memorable era was thus inaugurated in the national life and history. At the outset there was much uncertainty, as well as curiosity, at what might be the result, upon the society at large, of our universal education. Looking back from so many centuries, our subject possesses the certainty of fact, as well as the interest of a great problem. We shall see the effects as we step along, century by century, through my retrospect.

I shall merely say here that, after some preliminary experiences, we entirely reversed most of our old educa-