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25, 1863.]

of the anxieties of sincere and practical friends of the people is the ignorance of the law, and of the additions annually made to it, which prevails all over the country. The citizens are subjected to the law on the supposition that they all know whatever concerns them of the provisions of the law; and ignorance is never admitted as an excuse for any offence under the law. In consequence of the Lord Chancellor’s proposal that the statute law shall be taken in hand, in order that whatever is obsolete, or by any cause rendered useless, shall be thrown out, and the useful remainder then classified and consolidated, we have heard more than usual of late about the impossibility of any Englishman becoming acquainted, in the longest life-time, with the requirements of the law he is bound to obey. If the Lord Chancellor’s scheme were already accomplished (and no living man will see that event) few but professional lawyers and well-read gentlemen would know much more than they do now of the legal conditions under which they are living: and the hopelessness of this department of citizen education has led some of my friends (and I should hope many others), to consult and consider whether something cannot be done, in a homely and practical way, to keep the public up with the changes in the law which take place in every session of Parliament.

There are too many educated persons—men of leisure, even,—who satisfy themselves with listlessly glancing over the “Review of the Session,” which the lending newspapers present a day or two after its close. A few more may look over the “Abstracts of the Acts of the Session,” which appear in the “Annual Register,” and other chronicles of the time. But such reading takes little hold on the mind, unless some particular interest is connected with it. The question is, whether such an interest can be connected with it in the case of the occupied classes, who can only just spare time for picking up the news of the day as the session proceeds, and can have no clear idea at the end what Parliament has done or left undone. I have been asked whether it might not be a good experiment, growing into an established practice, for intelligent citizens, qualified for such an office, to collect their neighbours to a sort of lecture, or set of lectures, in the autumn, in which should be explained, in the fullest and clearest manner, all material alterations in the laws, or additions to them, since the year before. There must be gentlemen in every town well able to do this: and in the country the parson, the lawyer, the squire, the banker, and the head shopkeeper could surely manage it among them. They could tell the city gentry who are less acquainted with the popular mind, how eagerly every man listens to any account of the law which particularly concerns himself—how any new Game Act has such an interest in any sporting district that one may pick out the poachers in a crowded lecture-room by the keenness of their attention to any remarks upon it. In the same way a Drainage bill, Highway Act, Public-house Act, repeal of duties, or law for the regulation of labour, will bring an eager audience to hear about it in a neighbourhood in which it is applicable. It will not be denied that the order and comfort of society, and the social character of multitudes of the citizens would be prodigiously improved if, all over the kingdom, some cheerful and pleasant voice could, one day in the year, tell all listeners what vexations have been removed from laws which galled them, and what new rules have been made for their guidance and protection in their business, and their affairs of every kind. I leave this suggestion to those whom it may interest, only adding that if I were twenty years younger, there would be few things that I should like better than to assemble the villagers—all the men, and as many of their wives as could come,—under the great oak in yonder field, or in the school room, or in the church, and to inform them, with the sanction of the lawyer, of what the legislature has done, during the past session, for them and their fellow-citizens.

It will be alleged that this supposes too advanced a state of political knowledge in the people: and the only answer to this is that hearers otherwise very ignorant can yet understand and feel an interest in regulations affecting themselves. The fact, however, indicates the further duty of giving the commonest political information wherever, and by whatever means it may be conveyed. There is little fear of overrating the prevalent ignorance, while sectarian divisions prevent the teaching of the very elements of political history in our schools, so that the stories of the Spanish Armada, and the Gunpowder Plot, and the Commonwealth, and the Revolution of 1688 are slurred over, or treated in mere chronicle style; and while many ladies, and a few gentlemen, complacently declare that they “know nothing about politics,”—“take no interest in politics.” I remember the sort of shock that was felt when, not long after the Queen’s accession, a letter of inquiry appeared in a newspaper, and was copied into others as a curiosity,—whether the Queen was of the Whig or Tory party,—bets depending on it! It was a useful illustration of popular political ignorance. So was another letter of the same character, wherein the question was asked why women did not give their votes for members of parliament at the poll as men do, and when and where they do it. This was no joke, as might be supposed. There were evidences of its being sheer ignorance. I fear there are many such, daily thrown into the editors’ waste baskets in every newspaper office, in town and country. One of the most astounding instances of this sort of ignorance that I have met with was when the Prince of Wales a few years since came into my neighbourhood. Of course, he was made much of; and for some days everybody was running hither and thither, and looking abroad for “our future king.” Every touch of his whip, every buttoning of his coat, every turn of his head, was noted; and every step he took was followed, bodily or by the telescope. We heard of nothing all along the road, but “our future king;” and yet, when he was gone, a neighbour of mine, a leader at the Methodist prayer-meetings, a member of the Odd Fellows, and of the Temperance Society, in speaking of “our future king,” asked me whose son he was! Such an incident throws one out of all one’s