Page:The probable course of legislation on popular education, and the position of the church in regard to it.djvu/7



question seems more imminent than that of Education. An Education measure must be the first-born of the Reform Bill; or, perhaps, twin-brotherhood would better express the relationship between them. Certainly the one was not fully forth before the other came and took hold of his heel, and it may be with the old promise, that "the elder shall serve the younger." "We must teach our future masters to learn their letters," was uttered before the Reform Bill became law; and this contained more, probably meant more, than the point of a sarcasm. The Education question springs at once out of the Representative. This is being daily recognized every where and by every one. With whatever variety of tone and expression, with all degrees of conviction, from a demand to an admission, every political voice, since the close of the Session, has been set to at least one common key-note, and that is the certainty, if not the necessity, of a wide measure of Education.

This kinship between the two questions will not be without its signs and tokens in points of resemblance. Such steps as that taken by Parliament last Session, not only are never retraced, but are apt to reproduce themselves, however strange may have been the result, or startling the process. Even in the particulars which are matters of unwelcome fact, rather than of clear firm opinion, they act as a precedent rather than a warning. Before we trace these points of similitude more closely, we may remark that one point of difference will only make the Educational question more imperative. Many people thought, or like at least to suppose they thought, that the Reform Bill was expedient because it was inevitable; the Education measure will be recognized as inevitable because it is expedient. It were well, then, to consider any features in the late political question, which are sure or likely to characterize its correlative. Perhaps the extent to which individuals or bodies may affect the Education question will depend very much on the amount of recognition they give to this condition. What we would wish should be, must wait very much on what will be. And the opportunity for this reasonable reflection and possible influence may be now, and