humane. To the proud he was lofty, to the humble he was lowly. So enthusiastic was he in his profession, that, during war, nothing could have induced him to remain on shore. The whole navy speak of him with but one voice. The commendation is the same from the commander as from the man before the mast. Never did he desire a seaman to do that which he would not have performed himself; and the knowledge of this trait in his disposition reconciled the toiling mariner to many a dangerous and laborious duty. Whatever situation in life had been his lot, he must have been a conspicuous character. Those energies of mind, which carried him so high in the navy, would have been equally exerted in any other duty: and it is one melancholy attendant upon a state of national war, and we may say always of national brutality, that it leads men away from those pursuits wherein minds of superior endowments would be employed for the benefit and the ainelioration of the state of mankind, to improve those arts which have for their object the destruction of our species, the engendering of malignant passions, and the propagation of vice and hardheartedness in the world.

The British System of Education for the least opulent, least instructed, and most numerous Class.

OUR object at present is chiefly confined to the duty of rendering to the public an account of the facts by which the state of this important concern has undergone alteration since the last statement which we were called upon to present. The facts, however, to which we more particularly allude, are those which regard the system of management; the plan devised for conducting the business, for relieving it from those accidents to which it has hitherto stood exposed, for placing it on a distinct and public basis, and giving to it that sort of security which the steadiness of public management, as much as possible exempt from the untoward accidents of individual behaviour, can alone bestow. The multiplication of schools, the progress of the public mind, the state of the funds, and other matters, shall be reserved till the publication of the Annual Report.

It is known already to our readers, that a plan adapted to the accomplishment of the abovementioned purposes has been for some time in agitation. It was distinctly feit, independently of the circumstances which accidentally created the chief difficulties

under which the Institution laboured, that such an alteration was highly necessary; and that what was maintained by the money of the public should clearly stand upon a public foundation, and as clearly remain under public inspection and control.

Not only the narrow supplies of the Institution, and the magnitude of the work to be performed, rendered the most frugal application of every farthing of the money an imperious and indispensable duty; but it was fully perceived and understood that one expedient, and one only, was of a nature to accomplish the purpose. Complication; obscurity; the want of a due separation of what ought to be separated; the mixing together of different funds destined to different services, so that the connexion between the supplies provided and the services performed cannot be easily and immediately traced, nor a judgement formed whether the work accomplished is all that with the means provided it is possible to accomplish; form one of the general causes of the misapplication of public funds, of the mismanagement of public business, and of the prevention of innumerable advantages which might happily be conferred upon society.

These reasonings could not fail to lead to the conclusion, that the funds which the public supplied to this Institution, for the maintenance of a school, and for the training of schoolmasters, should be simply, and without admixture with any other concern, appropriated to those purposes; that they should not only be held distinct, and free from complication with any man's individual concerns or individual expense, but that no man individually should have power to incur a single farthing of charge upon the public fund. It was not the experience of their own particular inconveniences alone which led the Committee to this general opinion; but their conviction that, without a system of management moulded upon this principle, inconveniences could never be avoided.

This principle, indeed, lies so necessarily at the root of all good management, that it may naturally enough be asked, How came this important Institution ever to be conducted on a different plan? To account for this, it is necessary to recollect in what circumstances the Institution originated, and through what stages it has passed; from which it will be visible, that at no earlier period was the introduction of a more perfect system practicable; and that the very first occasion has been embraced at which the object could with perfect propriety be accomplished. The school in the Borough Road, which Mr. Lancaster, then a very young man, opened for teaching the children of the poor in that neigh

bourhood for pay, as a means of livelihood, gave, as the public are well informed, the commencement to the proceedings which it is now the object and the endeavour of the Institution to carry on and extend. By employing the children themselves, as instruments in the instruction of one another, and contriving expedients by which this instrumentality was rendered more efficient than it had hitherto been, as well as by other oeconomical devices, Mr. Lancaster rendered it evident that schooling for the poor might be provided at a small expense. Happily for the public, Mr. Lancaster was not of a character to let his merits remain unknown. The proceedings in the school in the Borough Road were displayed to the public; and the public mind was prepared to receive a deep impression from the contemplation of such an object. Very happily, too, a class of persons whose opinions were sure to attract attention, were incited to attack in print these plans for the instruction of the poor, in the name of the Church, and to declare that, if the children of the poor were allowed to be instructed by a sectary, the Church was in danger. This increased the public curiosity; the public curiosity increased the public knowledge; the public knowledge multiplied instead of diminishing the friends of the work; and the King himself gave to it his countenance and support.

Notwithstanding the assistance, however, which Mr. Lancaster had thus received, he had fallen into debt, and was on the point of sinking under his embarrassments, when the knowledge of his transactions and of his difficulties was imparted to Mr. Fox, With a public spirit which has few examples, that excellent man, actuated by a sense of duty to preserve the operation of a most important benefit to society, pledged a considerable portion of what he possessed to relieve a person whom he regarded as a great instrument of public good, and enable him without intermission to continue his efforts to that end. A small number of individuals afterwards stepped in to share with him the burthen, and took upon themselves a part in managing the establishment. This was the second of the stages at which the proceedings arrived, when the school was still the property of Mr. Lancaster, and a private concern; at which time he was engaged to the individuals who had relieved him, to exert himself for that public object which had procured him their friendship, and for the means of reimbursing to them the advances which they had made in his behalf.

After some efforts of a less public nature, and after some jour, neys performed by Mr. Lancaster for the purpose of exciting, by means of lectures, the spirit of the people throughout the country,

and improving their knowledge of the means of imparting instruction to the most numerous class of the community, it was resolved by the individuals who had most closely connected themselves with the business of this important concern, to endeavour to place it upon a more public foundation than it had as yet obtained. Persons of the highest rank and influence were easily induced to co-operate in the generous undertaking, and to lend their name and their exertions, as well as their purses, for carrying it on. A committee was also formed of a number of men of influence and talent. And the public contributions were solicited by public meetings upon a more extended scale. This was the third of the stages at which the proceedings in behalf of this system of schooling arrived. It was now partly a public concern, but it was partly also a private one. The school was still the school of Mr. Lancaster, though it was Mr. Lancaster's school supported by public contributions. It was not easy therefore, if Mr. Lancaster insisted upon it, to prevent his private influence from interfering greatly with the public influence, or Mr. Lancaster's personal expenses from blending themselves with the public expenses of the Institution. This, it is evident, was a state of confusion under which no public concern could be well and economically managed.

In this situation Mr. Lancaster suddenly engaged in the business of a boarding-school, for his own benefit, on a large scale at Tooting. It became now more than ever necessary to make a determined stand for preventing the funds of the Institution from becoming in any manner pledged for the private expenses of Mr. Lancaster, or being converted to the support of his projects. To prepare the way for this, one measure was absolutely necessary, which was to accomplish a bargain with Mr. Lancaster for the transfer of his property in the premises in the Borough Road to the Institution. After some negotiation this was accomplished on terms of his own proposing, which were, that the gentlemen who had taken upon themselves his early debts, and who stood in advance for him to the amount of upwards of 5,000l., should exonerate him from all obligation to them, and should become invested in the premises in the Borough Road in lieu of payment. To this proposal the gentlemen in question acceded, and agreed to hold the premises in trust for the public concern, and to look to the public for payment of the sums which they had willingly embarked in a service by which the public was so greatly to profit.

Now for the first time was it, possible to render the Institution entirely public, and to place it, clear of all deduction or reservation, upon a public foundation. A plan for that purpose be

gan to be matured. In the mean time the difficulties with Mr. Lancaster increased; difficulties of which it is by no means easy to speak, and to lay before the public that information which the public has a right to require; that information which the public demands, and which is plainly necessary for constituting that ground of confidence on which the continuance of its support depends. We are however the less under any obligation of reserve, that Mr. Lancaster himself has published his hostility to the Committee, and in print denounced them his enemies and persecutors. As far too as discussion in a public meeting, and the publication of its proceedings in the newspapers, remove all delicacy on the subject of the opposition which Mr. Lancaster has made to those who had combined in using their utmost endeavours for carrying on the business of education on the most extensive and liberal scale, there can be no reason for withholding any facts which it is useful the public should know. Besides, it is our clear and decided opinion, that not on this occasion only, but on almost all occasions that can be named, the publication of the truth is salutary to all parties, and most of all to the party that is most in the wrong. It makes the lesson of experience to strike the deeper. It renders the sense of the error more keen and pungent; the association between the idea of the fault and the idea of its natural punishment, or its painful consequences, more strong and operative; it gives more security, in a word, for the reclaiming of the offender; for obtaining, in future, beneficent conduct, where before was experienced the reverse. With regard even to the parties on whom, on such occasions, the truth may appear the hardest to lean, they cannot exhibit any feeling more calculated to excite well-grounded hopes of future worth and utility, than a patient and decent approbation of what is useful to be told. The person who thoroughly hates his offence, and is resolved to redeem whatever estimation he may have lost, by new degrees of virtue and of merit in future, feels that he loses by the fullest disclosure of his actions nothing which he would wish to retain. The man who is inordinately solicitous that as much as possible of his transgressions should be concealed, gives a strong proof that he is not fully inclined to redeem his past by his future behaviour; that he wishes to have a good character upon cheap terms, or rather upon dishonest terms; that he wishes to pass upon the public for better than he is, at least with regard to the past; and if he wishes to do so with regard to the past, it is a strong presumption that he will wish to do so with regard to the future. We say this, however, rather as general doctrine, of high importance and utility, applicable indeed on the present, as