OBSTRUCTION OF INQUIRY INTO SOCIAL MALADIES.
ARE the mass of the people ignorant or not ? Lord ASHLEY says that they are; Mr. EDWARD BASSES junior, of Leeds, says that as respects the manufacturing districts the charge is unfounded. Lord ASHLEY charges those districts with the grossest immorality ; Mr. Baum says that they are less immoral than the agricultural dis- tricts. What is ignorance? what immorality ? Perhaps the noble M.P. and the provincial Editor disagree as to the very terms—if they have even defined the terms in their own minds.
To disprove Lord ASHLEY'S charges, Mr. BAINES has been at considerable pains to colk ct statistical details, which perhaps pos- sess as much accuracy as official statistics ordinarily can claim. According to these accounts, of which a more detailed summary will be found in another page, in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and great part of Cheshire, the districts whence Mr. BAINES'S information is drawn, there is church-room provided for 50 per cent of the popu- lation, and the amount of church-accommodation increases faster than the population; there is Sunday-school instruction for 1 in every 5i of the population, and Day-school instruction for 1 in 10; and of the Sunday-school pupils 54 per cent are able to read the Holy Scriptures. Now what do these statistics prove ? They show that there is plenty of room for people to go to church or chapel, but not that they do go to church or chapel. If they go, the statistics do not account for the fact that regular attendance on religious worship is compatible with the excesses of the outbreak last summer. And with that circumstance unexplained, the great preponderancy of Dissent exhibited in Mr. BAINES'S tables is also curious : it proves nothing, but it suggests something that merits disproof.
It may be considered that the statistics prove a great quantity of elementary learning. They rather prove a great quantity of teach- ing ; all estimated, be it observed, by those whose credit is piqued to make as goodly a show as possible. But is all that is taught learned; and is it all worth learning ? does any considerable part of it deserve the name of instruction ? Mr. BAINES'S test—a re- turn of scholars who read in the Bible—does not seem to meet the case ; for a great number of children may do what Sunday-school teachers please to call "read" in the Bible, and yet know nothing of that Bible, and still less of reading in any other book. The real test would be, if any proportion of those children could read in Miss EDGEWORTH'S Early Lessons, Dr. AIRES'S Evenings at Home, or any book of easy access and apprehension ; not the thumbed page as familiar as the path to the school-door. Much depends on the method as well as the quantity of the matter di- rectly learned : if the pupil had learned to read a page in the Bible on M. JACOTOT'S principle—of mastering the words by endless repetition, with a thorough analysis of every sentence—then indeed the reading of that page would imply very considerable progress in the art of reading. But we are not told on what principle Sunday- school pupils learn to read. Now a child of four years old may be taught to read, in daily lessons of not many minutes' duration, and without effort or straining, in six months : yet we hear of instances, and have met them too, in which children have attended Sunday- schools for years without learning to read, in the most ordinary and humble acceptation of the term. A key to the backwardness of the pupils might be sought in the teachers. Of what class are they ? what are their attainments ? The returns do not tell us. Something more should be shown than the fact that so many chil- dren are collected in certain buildings, and induced in the course of years to rehearse a column of the Bible.
In respect of morals, Mr. BAINES'S facts are chiefly comparative and negative, and less definite than those on the subject of educa- tion. "No one will pretend," he says, "that the remuneration of labour, and consequently the comforts of the labourer, are nearly so high in agriculture as in manufactures." But what are comforts? If they are limited to meat and drink, more convenient public- houses, and other town recreations, we believe that the manufac- turing labourer has the advantage : but it should be remembered, that unless he is out of work, he is tied daily for twelve hours to his labour, in not the most pleasing of work-rooms; that for his Sunday, many of the blameless delights of the country, open to the rustics, are denied to him; and that " Sabbath-observance "— not his own religious observance of the holy day, but the thing of appearances, alien from devotion, imposed upon him for the plea- sure of others—wofully restricts his town enjoyments on that single day of leisure. The agricultural labourer has less money, inferior food, perhaps harder, certainly more precarious work; but be enjoys the variety of the seasons, the freshness of physical exist- ence, and a good deal of the dolce far niente. Mr. BASSES allows him superior health : but, to a very great degree, superior health is the sign of superior comfort. On the authority of the Reports on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, the rural population are charged with grosser ignorance than the urban ; a melancholy fact which does not at all justify the other melancholy fact against which it is set ; and, as we have said, it remains to be shown to what extent the so-called instruction diffused through one part of the country differs from the glaring ignorance of the rest. It may be added, that education is not quite so urgently needed among an Arcadian race as among those whose congrega- tion in towns stimulates their minds to social and political activity. The Reports are also cited to prove the grossest immorality, prin- cipally pointing to want of female chastity : field-work is said to be a main cause of this vice, and forty-nine out of fifty, seventy out of a hundred, or some other large proportion, is stated by many wit- nesses as representing the number of girls who are debauched. In West Yorkshire, the proportion of illegitimate children to every 1,000 inhabitants is 3; in Lancashire, 34; in Norfolk, 6; in Here- ford, 6. Promiscuous sleeping is a notorious nuisance in many rural districts. But the practical nature of the two kinds of de- bauchery compared is not exhibited, in these figures and facts, on the surface. It is said that mothers neglect their infants in the country as well as in towns : but how far less odious is the coop- ing-up a child in a cabin open at all its four sides to the free winds, and closeting the same helpless creature in the room of a noisome court ? If the illegitimate children preponderate in the rural dis- tricts, be it remembered that a more desperate and morbid de- pravity visits whole classes of town female population with barren- ness—in any other case accounted a curse ! The rude indulgence of the passions, which marks the untutored state of the country, becomes worse in the town ; where it is exasperated by some checks, incited by worse facilities, and rendered far more loath- some by the multiplicity of numbers, the squalor, and even by the vigilance of a police which forces it into concealment, with all the added squalor and depravity of that concealment. The immorality of the country is bad enough; but it is nothing as compared with the hideous profligacy of slums and wynds in great towns. It is no metaphor to say, that in the open fields its rankness is venti-
lated, and is both less offensive and less pestilent than in the close alleys.
These comparative statistics, then, settle nothing; because the circumstances prevent the evils compared from being the same thing, in the case of the immorality; and in the case of the "edu- cation," there is no real test of the nature of the boon. If men are merely bent upon making out that theI are "in the right" and others "in the wrong," practical remedies are hopeless. The only use of such comparisons is to convey some idea which needs a starting-point to be conceived, or to show that it is not unavoidable, or that it belongs to a particular class of circumstances. If, for instance, we show that vice of certain kinds is worse in towns than in villages, we have some more vivid idea of its degree, and we perceive that the excess is not inherent in human nature but only in certain kinds of urban life : we have the more lively impression of the cause and urgency of the disease. Mr. BAINES defends the manufacturing districts, as if they were inculpated ; which is a not very profound use of some loose expressions made by others. The imputation of blame is commonly if not always idle ; and we re- member no public discussion more free from it than that which was preliminary to the Factories Bill. The sole object seemed to be to expose the evils, not for the silly purpose of reproach, but for remedy. If Mr. BAINES is content with the moral and intellectual cultivation of the manufacturing districts, we could understand his purpose, though we might be surprised at the humility of his aspi- rations for his species ; but in that case he might be passed by, as one who could not enter the discussion. He does not appear to be so content, but to be actuated by the double desire of damaging the Factories Bill and of defending the pride of the manufacturers and Dissenters from mortifying inferences ; motives which do not deserve much more consideration, except in so far as they represent the feelings of a numerous class. With the great subjects of education and morals they have nothing to do ; and those politicians who really have the welfare of the people at heart must look deeper into the real nature of their perils and their wants. It is no party question of right and wrong, or of names, that needs probing to the bottom ; but the nature, extent, and remedies for an active social disease. While schoolmasters and doctors are quarrelling about their own merits and nostrums, the patient is sinking.
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