THE BIRMINGHAM AGAINST BRUMMAGEM BENE- FITS TO THE WORKING-CLASSES.
Tna" Athenic Institution " of Birmingham is doing better than any Ten-hours Bill; for instead of arbitrarily restricting overwork, IL i raising a permanent antagonistic influence. The working people of that busy town have tried divers laudable associations to educate themselves—a Mechanics Institute, an Athenaeum, and the like ; but all failed. And why ? because the proposed students could not use them : "they were overworked," said a promoter of all the projects ; "their animal spirits were destroyed, their physi- cal energies impaired, and their mental faculties weakened by 'work, work, work.'" Most true ; and the didactic preachers of none but " intellectual " recreations for the poor forget, not only that the comfort of life needs recreation, and that the overworked man makes an indifferent student, but that overstrained labour of any kind implies a state of mind absolutely unfit to protit by efforts of study; and also that less formal methods of teaching may be as much real sterling " education " as the pedagogue's lecturing.
You must first consider the capacity of your scholar—not what he might be in a state of society suited to develop all his energies, but in that state which leaves him nothing but the dregs of his energies to be used at a fag-end of time—a scrap of time to be employed by a being jaded with fixed attention. It is of course not proposed to communicate, in that scrap of time, to a creature whose attention is exhausted, the whole circle of human know- ledge. A portion must be selected. Now the selection should not be guided by the abstract excellence of the portion to be coin- municated—it would never do to attempt giving to a fagged-out man, before bed-time, that concentrated instruction which may suit youths of good circumstances for two hours in the easy and vigorous noontide between breakfast and dinner. Just as the weakened stomach derives less nourishment from a greater quantity of concentrated food than it can extract from a weaker kind of food and smaller in quantity, no solid mass of knowledge can be "assimilated" by the mind, unless it be alert and fit to digest and quicken. In case of an exhausted state, a stimulant is needed for the will ; and a little knowledge spiced with such stimulant may be learned where more of a heavier kind would load the digestive organ with a hungry burden. Now much of what is really " education" to the educated classes, is not the matter di- dactically taught in schools, but the habits of agreeable deport- anent, of tasteful enjoyment, of conversation with the better-taught. How much of the education of young ladies consists purely in that kind of tuition, many a patriarch in the middle-classes, with straitened means, could tell. The girls "know " little—their knowledge is contemptible ; yet, compare them as cultivated beings with ruder classes, ay, and even with many " well-informed " people in a circle inferior to their own, and probably they will by no means suffer in the comparison. This is one consideration why the recreative method of self-culture for the working-classes is a part in the circle of education well suited to their circumstances. Perhaps no means could produce such proportionately great and beneficial results, as imparting to those classes the tastes and en- joyments of more cultivated classes.
Whatever ought to be the most powerful influence on the human mind, in many cases taste is so : it is the training of the wish—a stage before the training of the duty; it is the great agent in controlling those powerful classes who can bend the law to their will ; it would absolutely forbid many of those horrors which have distinguished the rule of the " lower orders " when they have snatched a temporary hold of power ; it would be a better regimen for their homes than any sanitary law ; it would make them safer and happier always.
To instil into the working-classes a knowledge of the value of leisure as a source of enjoyment through life, and of developing and sustaining their own powers, would be the best of all possible checks to the " over-production" and over-toil of our factory system. If the working-men knew—distinctly and unanimously recognized their own interest and good in that respect—if they were only true to themselves and to each other—if you could only infuse into them the desire and energy to stand up independently for themselves in that behalf, you would do a hundred times better than by crutching them up like babies or cripples in the go-cart of a Ten-hours Bill. You cbuld never persuade them by an effort of reason, or as an act ,of " auty," to waive the present and delusive temptations of nominally higher wages, nor to add to the toils of the factory the more brain-oppressing labours of a school-study : but make the duty identical with pleasure—make them like the process that is to regenerate them—let the medicine answer to their thirst, refresh the palate, and stimulate to its own use—and you enlist their wishes with you ; not their affected, because supposed creditable, 'wishes, but their real heartfelt desires. We truly believe, that if the working-classes really willed, universally, the curtailment of their toil, avowed their will, and asked the help of employers, all would cheerfully agree to a more rational practice, to the immense benefit of all. No attempt to bring about that state of mind among the people has been so promising as this Athenic Institution of Birmingham. Our sole objection is to its pseudo-classical title : let those towns that imitate Birmingham in deed take a better name—boldly assume that the institution will become characteristic of the nation, and call their associations by a title hopefully signi- ficant in its generality and plainness—English Societies.
One most agreeable feature we notice is the total absence of party-politics established in the Birmingham institution. Its objects are as much above party-polities as a human being standing in the presence of the creation is above the highest man-made officer even in the high court of Parliament. When Lord JOHN MANNERS and his companions, Conservatives, fraternize with those who may be Radicals or Chartists, but who approach them in very different relations, they nobly vindicate a humanity above their "rank." "Young England" has done well, and has something more earnest than words to speak for it. The fusion of classes thus begun must not only directly counteract the existing alienation, but the pre- sence and companionship of the cultivated is one of the best means of the social species of education which we have regarded as most suited to the state of the working-classes. And it must powerfully disarm all doubts and prejudices as to the intercourse of the several orders. From the report, nothing could be in better taste than the whole conduct of the evening at the Birmingham dinner ; and we are only anxious to see it imitated in every town of the country.
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