They
question if it be wise to tell people that you will do for them, out
of fear of their power, what you have left undone, so long as your only
motive was compassion for their weakness and their sorrows. And, if
ignorance of everything which is needful a ruler should know is likely
to do so much harm in the governing classes of the future, why is it,
they ask reasonably enough, that such ignorance in the governing classes
of the past has not been viewed with equal horror?
Compare the average artisan and the average country squire, and it may
be doubted if you will find a pin to choose between the two in point of
ignorance, class feeling, or prejudice. It is true that the ignorance is
of a different sort--that the class feeling is in favour of a different
class and that the prejudice has a distinct savour of wrong-headedness
in each case--but it is questionable if the one is either a bit better,
or a bit worse, than the other. The old protectionist theory is the
doctrine of trades unions as applied by the squires, and the modern
trades unionism is the doctrine of the squires applied by the artisans.
Why should we be worse off under one regime than under the other?
Again, this sceptical minority asks the clergy to think whether it
is really want of education which keeps the masses away from their
ministrations--whether the most completely educated men are not as open
to reproach on this score as the workmen; and whether, perchance, this
may not indicate that it is not education which lies at the bottom of
the matter?
Once more, these people, whom there is no pleasing, venture to doubt
whether the glory which rests upon being able to undersell all the rest
of the world, is a very safe kind of glory--whether we may not purchase
it too dear; especially if we allow education, which ought to be
directed to the making of men, to be diverted into a process of
manufacturing human tools, wonderfully adroit in the exercise of some
technical industry, but good for nothing else.
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