Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/189

Rh Christiana, to tho transient charity of philanthropic men, or tho "enlightened self-interest" of mechanics and small-traders, who now and then found institutions for tho education of some small fraction of tho multitude. But such institutions are little favoured by the Government, or the spirit of the dominant class; gentility does not frequent them, nor nobility help them, nor royalty watch over to foster and to bless. Tho Parliament, which voted one hundred thousand pounds of the nation's money for the queen's horses and hounds, had but thirty thousand to spare for tho education of her people. No honour attends the educators of tho people; no wealth is heaped up for them; no beautiful buildings are erected for their use, no great libraries got ready at the public charge; no costly buildings are provided. You wonder at the colleges and collegiate churches of Oxford and of Cambridge; at the magnificence of public edifices in London, new or ancient—the Houses of Parliament, the Bank, the palaces of royal and noble men, the splendour of the churches—but yon ask, where are the school houses for the people? You go to Bridewell and Newgate for the answer. All this is consistent with the idea of an aristocracy. The gentlemen is the type of the State; and the effort of the State is towards producing him. The people require only education enough to become the servants of the gentlemen, and seem not to be valued for their own sake, but only as they furnish pabulum for the flower of the oligarchy.

In Rome and England, great sums have been given by wealthy men, and by the State itself, to furnish the means of a theocratic or aristocratic education to a certain class; and to produce the national priests, and the national gentlemen. There public education is the privilege of a few, but bought at the cost of the many ; for the plough-boy in Yorkshire, who has not culture enough to read the petition for daily bread in the Lord's Prayer, helps pay the salary of the Master of Trinity, and the swine-herd in the Roman Campagna, who knows nothing of religion, except what he learns at Christmas and Easter, by seeing the Pope carried on men's shoulders into St. Peter's, helps support the Propaganda and the Roman College. The privileged classes are to receive an education under the eye of the State, which considers itself bound to furnish them the