Thomas Beddoes to an Unidentified Correspondent, 25 January 1792 (Extract of a Letter on Early Instruction, Particularly That of the Poor)
On the best method to teach Reading and Writing. – Idea of a Book proper for this purpose. – Of the care that should be taken to improve our early benevolent sensations into fixed principles of action.–Of the urgent necessity of humanizing the minds of the poorer class of Citizens. – Inevitable consequences of a ferocious spirit in them. – Cautions respecting religious instruction. – Excessive danger of strongly attaching to the dogmas of any sect, the minds of those who cannot examine the grounds on which they rest.
Madam,
You must have observed how exceedingly tiresome the first advances in reading and writing always prove. Perhaps the most admired of his subsequent attainments does not cost the philosopher more pains: universal experience, we find, has suggested an hundred expedients for diminishing the difficulty: and surely humanity not less than good policy enjoins us to search for the easiest method of disseminating arts, which have enabled human reason to soar so high and which by judicious management, may equally exalt the virtue and happiness of nations.
In all education, our earliest care must be to bestow that quickness of sight and apprehension, in which ready reading consists. Is it indifferent what books are used for this purpose? In our momentary conversation you were perhaps surprized to hear me lay so much stress upon a proper choice of books. But I flatter myself that when you have considered my reasons, you will adopt my sentiments. If we confine our views to the immediate views only, we shall assuredly save much time, and a great deal of irksome labour; a very simple consideration will I imagine, impress you strongly with the justness of this observation. Suppose for instance we should attempt to teach reading by means of a Latin book. The letters will be the same: the method of spelling similar. Only the learner would not meet with a single word to excite an idea in his mind. His progress, you see, would be excessively toilsome; nor would there be a single circumstance to afford him encouragement. If therefore it be most difficult and disgusting to learn from a book which presents to the understanding one universal blank, I infer that it would be most easy and pleasant to learn from a book in which he could comprehend every thing, or could be made by a little explanation either given by the matter, or judiciously inserted in the context, to comprehend every thing.
What kind of a book then would be best adapted to the capacity of a child? This will be easily discovered. The soul of a child, to borrow an expression from the French legislators, essentially resides in his senses. It would be extremely injudicious to make a premature attempt to force into his head any ideas, not immediately arising from this source, unless perhaps a very few intimately connected with them. We shall be led, I think, by the train of our reflections to easy means of assisting him in the acquisition of such ideas without making him feel that he is under any extraneous influence. And the greater number he acquires of such ideas, the better, provided you can engage him to dwell long enough upon each to fix it firmly and distinctly in his mind. We shall thus insensibly form the talent for observation; a talent which constitutes so large a portion of the difference between different individuals; for I cannot suppose that those who have a strong tendency to collect these materials of genuine knowledge will be backward to combine and arrange them. Thus you see though I did not either profess or design to trace the consequences of an education that sets out on rational principles, how soon and how unavoidably I am led to one of the utmost importance. Indeed I am persuaded that you will trace out, by a little reflection, consequences far more numerous and beneficial than are commonly apprehended. In the mean time I may extend to general maxims, the remark I have already made upon all ideas which the spontaneous exercise of the senses does not impress. They are not merely uninteresting, they are altogether loathsome to children. We may observe them any day just as much disgusted by the Moral as they are engaged by the Narrative of a fable. General inferences can, in truth, never be either grateful or instructive to a mind unfurnished with the knowledge of particulars and not yet ripe for such combinations. This then is one of my reasons for believing that those pious ejaculations which compose so much of Reading-made-easy are ill adapted to children. Will you suspect me of refining too much, when I add that they may easily produce positively bad effects; and this in more than one way, beyond merely throwing an impediment in the road of instruction: that they can have no good effect, is certain. Can merely making a child repeat in so many words, that GOD IS GOOD, THAT GOD IS WORTHY TO BE PRAISED, GOD IS LOVE, GOD IS MY HIDING PLACE AND MY SHIELD, GOD IS LIGHT, &c. for such is the perpetual burden of the song, impress him with a proper internal conviction of such truths? Impossible! they must be proved to him at a maturer age by examples, and not by injunctions.
Has it ever been found that just notions concerning the perfections of the Deity have been entertained and correspondent practices adopted by any nation or any individual, merely because they were commanded to believe so and so? I cannot imagine a more egregious folly than to consider the unity and attributes of God as objects of precept. Convince the idolater and he will forsake his Images. Instruct him and he will worship ONE GOD in spirit and in truth. I think every one who attends to his own feelings must be persuaded that he believes not what he will but what he must. Human victims indeed without number have been sacrificed to the contrary absurd supposition; but this happened because the unthinking were told that they believed what they could currently repeat, but very faintly imagine, and did not at all understand. Now one of the ill consequences to which I am soliciting your attention is this; I conceive that the habit in the CHILD of hearing and pronouncing certain sounds without any movement of the mind, will dispose the MAN to hear the same sounds with the same vacancy of thought. Your piety will incline you to listen to this objection and when I consider the necessity of a clear apprehension to a sound judgment, the same objection strikes me under another form. Will not children long used to insignificant sounds become careless of the meaning of words? and will they not acquire an indistinctness of conception and dimness of understanding; and, losing that timidity, which is the safeguard of conscious ignorance, be prepared by a perverse education to speak and act at random. Thus perhaps those who love to talk of what they do not comprehend, may some of them be indebted to their Reading-made-easy for this troublesome talent.
I hope I have said enough to decide your opinion of a Book, still put into the hands of almost all poor Children. I will therefore endeavour to sketch a better.
Letters without doubt, the component parts of words must be learned first, and then words, the component parts of sentences. And even here in so simple a business as teaching the alphabet the common method is not perhaps incapable of improvement. In order to save time and trouble a very ingenious French Writer proposes to teach writing and reading at the same time. Poor children, I believe, are seldom sent to school very early; and his scheme, on this account, stands the best chance of answering with them. He proposes to make use of printed copies of an easy round writing hand, and he thinks that the action of imitating the letters as they become successively acquainted with them, would prove a source of amusement and very soon confer the power of distinguishing them quickly. We ought to place the printing character beside the written on our copies, as, A A, a a, &c.
In order to attain a familiarity with combinations of letters, such words should be selected as a child can understand. To these should be added such others as it may be useful to make him acquainted with. By these I mean such as will quicken his curiosity and induce him to look with a more steady attention on the objects around him. This idea should be carefully carried on through every stage of instruction. In the Fourth part of Mrs. Barbauld’s Lessons, from page 72, to the end it is executed with great success in the explanation of such terms as ‘web-footed, cloven-hoofed, quadrupeds,’ and others expressive of natural appearances.
A set of extremely simple phrases should next be presented to the young pupil. These should relate to the common occurrences of life; they should express the observations he may have made himself and the judgments he may have been likely to form in consequence. He will be delighted with the image of his mind thus reflected! and his perceptions will become clearer as he contemplates them in the faithful mirror of expressive language. Such phrases as the following will exemplify my meaning: ‘Your face is not clean. Boys should keep their faces clean. When the great dog goes by, the hen calls her chickens and shelters them under her wings: then how she chuckles and looks as if she would fly at the great dog: poor little things! it is well she takes such care of them: they could not take care of themselves.’ Here too Mrs. Barbauld has large claims upon the gratitude of parents and children. If her book of sentences can be improved, it would perhaps be by altering her imperatives into optatives. I prefer this as the more gentle mood. Perhaps also she might oftener have insinuated a moral judgment by a well chosen epithet.
Our collection of phrases should be succeeded by short stories, calculated to fix attention upon those sentiments that arise earliest and oftenest in the mind. Here I really know not which to admire most – the fair opening offered by nature for establishing good impressions and preparing the mind for benevolent principles of action, or our long submission to the established absurdities of education. Nature has made us very early sensible to kindness; a fact, I suppose nobody will dispute, who has ever seen an infant smile upon its mother, or stretch out its arms towards its nurse. We are pleased with those that give us pleasure. – Such is the mechanism of Human nature at all ages; and it may easily be matured into an habitual affection for those who serve and are kind to us – into filial love, gratitude, friendship, and benevolence. Now proper stories exhibiting these feelings in action, would render the conception of them more distinct and more agreeable: and the child would be gradually habituated to that harmony of mind which so much contributes to render a person not only good but amiable. You will find instances of such stories in Mrs. Trimmer’s History of the Robins, the Children’s Friend, and in Sandford and Merton.
Mr. Bewick, in one of the vignettes in his History of Quadrupeds, where he places in the foreground two boys, rejoicing at the dying agonies of a dog which they have hanged upon a tree, and a gallows in the distance, has delineated an important truth. Cruelty to animals is one among the earliest and most pernicious acquisitions of ill-educated children; and yet the same constitution of their nature, disposes them to acquire the habitual sentiment of compassion both for men and animals: for the cry of distress pierces the bosom of the child, and by exciting a painful sensation, prompts him to attempt the relief of the sufferer! You see then how nature has laid the foundation of virtue in our earliest feelings, and how easy the transition from these feelings to good habits and principles.
Oppression, I am aware, such as is practised upon slaves and what is generally taught for religion, together with the time and manner of teaching it, stifle these benevolent tendencies: both indeed so far brutalize the mind and so entirely pervert our sympathy as to make us feel pleasure from the pain of our fellow-creatures. We are also capable, from the mere influence of evil examples, of becoming first callous to the torments of animals and afterwards of taking delight in them. In this case our love of action is led astray by the spirit of imitation. These two principles are so strong in children and of so ambiguous a character as to require constant superintendance. The conduct and sentiments of others, you know, are as it were, the mould in which their conduct and sentiments are cast, and the very necessity of their nature imposes upon them the constant exercise of their limbs. When unrestrained by a regard to the feelings of others, this love of action degenerates into that mischievous disposition which many parents are thoughtless enough to encourage as a mark of spirit. Here we may observe, that the malice of wits and the inhumanity of kings has the same origin. Surrounded as the latter always are by flattery from their cradle upwards, they learn to view the rest of mankind as the passive instruments of their power, and consider the waste of human blood with much the same indifference as the engineer, calculates the quantity of water necessary to set his machine in motion. Their unchecked love of action desolates the earth at the instigation of ambition and vengeance. We can regard the malicious exertions of a boy with contempt as well as with abhorrence. The magnitude of the evil has hitherto conspired with a narrow and slavish sympathy with the powerful to prevent these combined sentiments from checking the fatal bent of their activity. But reason has detected and will in time extirpate this pernicious instinct.
By carefully cherishing this tendency to general benevolence we shall hinder malice from taking possession of the breast. When you confider also that it is destined to bear the fruit of active virtue, you will be disposed to watch the tender plant with double vigilance. But while we exercise the minds of children in the contemplation of their own sympathetic feelings, we must be cautious to prevent them from degenerating into the grimace of affectation. With this view we should be careful to lead on their attention to beneficent exertions, excited by these humane impulses.
From the prospect afforded by a general education begun and conducted upon such principles as these, I cannot turn my view towards the spirit which animates too large a portion of our fellow-citizens without a lively sense of pain. Partly from the pernicious operation of our poor laws and partly from other causes, they are by no means, I fear, distinguished from the inhabitants of other countries by humanity of disposition. And I am sorry to add that where the ferocious taint has been washed away, it has often been succeeded by blind fanaticism. Now the history of mankind shews too clearly how ready fanaticism is to form a league with violence. And if the uncharitable, exclusive spirit, that broods over all clans of fanatics, be not evil enough, I see not what security we can ever have against the dangerous influence of their Chieftains, whenever they shall be tempted to abuse it.
But I shall afterwards return to the subject of religious impressions. At present I beg your attention for a few moments to the urgent necessity for humanizing the minds of the people.
Upon this the welfare of civil society immediately depends: for a savage spirit in the people and tyranny in the possessors of power are to one another cause and effect; the tyrant’s rod of iron has no other plausible pretext; nor is it possible that those who are crushed under its weight should not conceive an implacable hatred against their oppressors. The current news of the present hour affords too striking an illustration of these principles: I mean the wild devastations and promiscuous massacres that have desolated the Colony of St. Domingo. These certainly could never have been perpetrated but by beings whom oppression had diverted of every attribute of humanity except the form. Now suppose the desperate resolution of the Slaves to inflict such bloody vengeance upon their taskmasters had been discovered in time to take measures of prevention; what additional restraints must have been laid upon these unhappy sufferers? how severe would have been the inquisition taken by conscious inhumanity? Thus you see in one extreme case how tyranny produces brutality, and brutality tyrannical or burdensome restraints. It is so universally. We have lately seen soldiers stationed in a neighbouring town, that had hitherto been free from that nuisance, in order to repress the savage spirit of its inhabitants. Were there room for suspecting a similar disposition to be general, how easily might a minister find an excuse for the burden and danger attending a large standing army. The citizens ought to learn a different lesson in such a circumstance: they should provide themselves with arms, if it were but to avoid the absurd injustice of a law which condemns them to pay for depredations which they have no adequate means of preventing. But if we have not courage and activity to adopt this great expedient for conciliating security with freedom, let us the more eagerly embrace the only alternative, and civilize the people, unless we choose to repose beneath the shadow of Bayonets in mercenary and often in brutal hands. – And now the Birmingham Rioters have presented themselves to my thoughts, permit me to observe that if a small portion of human kindness had been infused into their bosoms by such a mode of instruction, as I wish to see generally adopted among the poor, they never could have committed excesses so disgraceful to their age and country. But I am utterly unable to conceive how Reading-made-easy with its endless repetition of godly exclamations, can inspire any human being with benevolence towards his neighbour.
With the moral stories we may intermix select portions of natural history, particularly descriptions of native plants and animals, with an account of their properties and manners. To compare the real object with the description would alleviate the labour of learning and improve the habit of observation. In many cases the relation between the structure and functions of animals is easily understood, as in the strong muscles that move the wings of birds. Our first acquaintance with such facts is always attended with the most lively sense of delight, and they are ever afterwards remembered and communicated with pleasure. Schools might easily be provided with some few obvious specimens and simple preparations for this purpose; and as nothing but what is extremely palpable should now be offered to the notice of children, the teachers might easily qualify themselves to give sufficient explanations.
Should you approve of this plan, you may yet be startled at the idea of having materials to procure and matters to form. Yet the difficulty would be overcome as soon as it should be encountered; nor would it now lie in our way, if superstition, which has laid some load upon every period of life, had not, in its watchfulness to mould mankind to its purposes, seized upon us at our birth, and been suffered by the helpless simplicity of our parents to torture us at will. In Roman Catholic countries, where the Priests have persuaded the multitude that it is sinful to pray to God in their mother tongue, children really learn to read in Latin books; and in protestant countries as soon as they have learned to read, they are forced to get by rote a papistical jargon, which for any thing they can understand of it, beyond a very few sentences, might as well be written in Latin, and which is so useless as to be almost universally forgotten when we cease to be obliged to repeat it at stated times.
There are numberless instances where we persevere in absurd and pernicious customs from an overwhelming sentiment of blind necessity, but there is none more signal than this. Few, I imagine, who can exert so much freedom of thought as to ask themselves, whether it would not be better to bestow all this labour upon moral instruction, can hesitate to decide. In this case, children would see daily exemplified in the practice of life those principles which they could easily comprehend when first explained to them. In a strong sense of humanity there is nothing ambiguous. It can never stir up animosity or be the badge of civil dissention. Even in the mutual services of those, who take delight in rehearsing the sounds appropriated to their common Creed, there is an air of illiberality. It is not enough to be a man; your tokens of religious free-masonry must be produced, before your claim to kindness and companion can be admitted. I prefer therefore the natural bond, by which man is linked to man, to the artificial by which sectary is linked to sectary. I would not teach children the magic and mysterious language of those tenets which discriminate sects. Without great precautions it can produce no specific effects except to kindle the enthusiasm of misanthropy.
In the Messiah, Gamaliel calls religion ‘a sword in the hand of the madman’ and ignorance is ever liable to the paroxysms of religious phrenzy: by ignorance I mean all belief on authority, all that has not been preceded by thought and enquiry. Along with a firm attachment to particular dogmas there will reside in such minds an habitual persuasion that were all men as WERE ALL MEN AS GOOD AS THEY SHOULD BE, THEY WOULD GO TO THEIR CHURCH AND BE OF THEIR COMMUNION. This fanatical disapprobation of other men’s sentiments will quickly grow into contempt and hatred. I need not say, what comes next. You know the natural progress of religious violence. Unless then, with the Hindoo teachers, we begin by declaring ‘that the contrarieties of religion and diversities of belief, which are causes of envy kind of enmity to the ignorant are in fact an evident demonstration of the power of the supreme being;’ that he himself ordained to every sect its peculiar religion: that he views with complacency the various modes of worship: and is ‘the intimate of the Musulman and the friend of the Hindoo: the companion of the Christian and the confidant of the Jew;’ unless we prepare the mind by some such antidote, I cannot, when I look back upon the past and round upon the present, consider without shuddering the practice of attaching the lower ranks in society to any dogmas. In all ages the influence of the exclusive spirit in religion has been attended with the most odious or the most tremendous effects. In the suspicious intervals of calm, it has contracted the heart of selfishness itself, and spread over society a settled gloom of unnatural malignity. What it has been at the seasons of violent eruption, you know too well already. But I wish some one would make extracts from the history of predominant sects, such as those which are now in circulation from the Evidence on the slave trade. The two works would deserve to be bound together, for authority over conscience has not been exercised with more lenity and is equally unfit to be entrusted to the hands of man. Maxims of benevolence however sanctioned by the founders of religion, have had far less influence to expand, than this exclusive spirit to narrow, the human heart. The temporal welfare of mankind, I am sure, requires charity in preference to faith, and philanthropy rather than zeal; nor can I believe that a quiet and humane inhabitant of Earth is on this account disqualified for becoming a denizen of Heaven. Though inconsiderate piety concur with priest-craft in receiving the advice with abhorence, I would recommend to inculcate with care and effect a RESPECTFUL INDIFFERENCE for the religion or irreligion of our neighbour. Let us prepare men to discuss religious topics, if they chuse to discuss them, with mutual deference and to acquiesce peaceably in different conclusions.
I see not why we should conceal from the common people the tenure by which they hold their faith: We shall find in this case also that honesty is the best policy, and that the truth is salutary. Let us then not scruple to confess that almost all men are indebted for their religion to the accident of birth: that had we ourselves exchanged parents with a Turk or a Spaniard, we should have been deeply impressed with a belief of the popish or mahometan creed.
The nations, from whom the inhabitants of Europe and the Western part of Asia are descended, had scarcely emerged from the grossest barbarity at the moment they adopted that faith which they have transmitted to their descendants. They were blind idolaters and very imperfectly acquainted with the principles of morality. They therefore could not but feel the superiority of the Christian and Mahometan doctrines; and they adopted either indifferently as they happened in the course of their predatory wanderings to fall in with a Christian or Mahometan nation: or if they were stationary savages, they embraced whichever of these two religions the arrival of more enlightened strangers offered to their ignorance. – What we have however chiefly to dread is the fierce and rancorous hatred that so commonly prevails between kindred sects. And it will not be extremely difficult to provide an antidote even for this malignant poison. Let us take a map and point out the political divisions of Europe: Let us observe that the boundaries of kingdoms mark also the extent of predominant sects: that the line for instance which divides Scotland from England divides episcopacy from presbyterianism: that the British channel separates France from England and Popery from Protestantism, that the Pyrenean mountains which run between France and Spain part Popery without the Inquisition, from Popery with the Inquisition: We might carry on this process through the German States. Now to these palpable facts let us add two others equally certain, and a plain conclusion in favour of universal charity will unavoidably follow. In all these countries there have been men who have believed that they have found in the Scriptures authority for their various creeds. The learning and abilities of these men have been so great and so nearly upon an equality that bigotry only or presumption would venture to decide between them: nor will their integrity be questioned except by adversaries, too deeply interested to be competent judges.
The other observation which I wish to have combined with the two preceding is this: there are not several different sorts of truth, one calculated for an English understanding, one for a Scotch, a third for a Spaniard, and a fourth for a Frenchman. Indeed if there were, this would be an unanswerable argument in favour of mutual respect and forbearance. But we see the mathematicians, the astronomers, and the natural philosophers in general of these several countries, receiving and returning instruction. As soon as any truth is fairly proved, it is universally admitted; it finds no difficulty in overleaping natural and political boundaries; and we may be certain that truth of every kind, when freely spoken and attentively heard, will display its irresistable ascendant over the human mind. Hence I infer that no decisive arguments have yet been produced by the champions of any sect: otherwise they would have produced their natural effect, general persuasion; and there would not be a peculiar system of religion for every nation any more than of astronomy or morals. .
Divines talk much to little purpose on the nature of evidence; for if the proofs in religion be by their nature different from what they are in science, that is, weaker, they should be neither surprized nor angry, if mankind are not convinced by them. In fact, religious impatience is the offspring of a latent apprehension [about five words illegible in source copy of text] some fear lest they should lose emoluments extorted from the superstition of a barbarous age – others lest those opinions, for which the lessons of their infancy have impressed them with blind reverence should not be able to bear a scrutiny. In bosoms of the most determined piety occasional risings against formularies of faith will be felt; but we immediately exert all our efforts to quell them, and almost abhor ourselves for the commission of this involuntary sin. To those who have been disturbed by such intrusions of disquieting doubt, even the weak presumption arising from an additional vote will afford confutation; and the voice of dissent will be the hateful cry that rouses these profane suggestions from their uncertain slumber. Johnson had severely felt the agonies that arise from the conflict between doubt and duty: and his rage against dissenters and infidels was produced by that soreness of mind which manifested itself not more in this phrenzy of zeal, than in the eagerness with which he sought the balm of religious sympathy. Can you help pityting that distress which could find relief in such slender comfort? For you will doubtless perceive that if we are to be swayed by the opinions of others, the desertion of one thinking man should have more influence than the adherence of ten thousand: We can hardly conceive that any person will abandon the creed in which he has been educated without some research, reflexion and comparison: whereas the bulk of mankind continue in their attachment without having ever dreamed that this creed can possibly he false; and yet I presume that no one ought to flatter himself that his conviction is rational, unless his doubts have been sincere. It might have been expected, if we had not too many proofs to the contrary, that modesty might keep those who have never impartially examined their neighbour’s – that is, those who never doubted of their own creed – from erecting themselves into inquisitors of conscience.
If a just sense of their own blindness may awake a suspicion in the breasts of the illiterate that they can have no pretext for interfering between God and their Neighbour’s conscience, we may perhaps strengthen the salutary impression by another consideration. How is it that those, to whom they look up as their teachers, form their system of opinions? Do they wander from country to country, after the example of the antient Philosophers, and choose among their different doctrines those which are approved by reason and utility? or since printing has diffused the knowledge of the sentiments and conduct of almost all nations, do they pledge themselves, after a mature deliberation at home to disseminate the unbiassed decisions of judgment and conscience? Does anything like careful enquiry precede determination? or do they preposterously give the form of assent to certain articles of belief, and then look out for the best proofs they can find? or even acquiesce without any subsequent search and mechanically observe appointed forms, each piously believing in the infallibility of his church.
In short, I see but two possible ways of escaping from the open and concealed mischiefs of religious dissention; and only one of these is practicable: that either all mankind agree to some one system, which every enquiring person MUST do, as soon as reasonable evidence of its truth shall be produced, and others will soon follow: or else that every man entertain a cordial persuasion that every other man is as respectable in his religious opinions, equally acceptable to God and well disposed towards his neighbour as he himself is in his? That any moral taint follows any speculative opinions is the most inhuman of prejudices. It is cherished in every Christian country, and we see what have been and what are its effects.
You will probably suspect that this indifference to the religious sentiments of others will damp all religious ardour and destroy religion itself. Let us not deceive ourselves by sounds that claim respect without conveying any meaning. If you cannot have faith, without thinking uncharitably of your dissentient neighbour and even without assaulting his conscience – if under the pretext of maintaining religion, you invade the freedom of thought and speech – the alternative is obvious: We shall do better without faith. Intolerance has been long universally disclaimed, among us at least. But reason is no longer satisfied with toleration, which more than compensates in insolence its small deficiency of injustice. She demands the equal privilege of opinion, the universal right of conscience; she claims for rational nature the full exercise of its characteristic attributes. Let christians profit by their calamitous experience: they have dealt long enough in discord, blood, and conflagrations: they may be content that scenes of Birmingham should close the horrid exhibition of their church history. After their sanguinary disputes, they may unite to call down Philanthropy upon earth, since she requires no sacrifice more costly than the presumption of Ignorance.
I am afraid you will think the conclusion of this letter, like that, of the reign of several Jewish kings, has belied the fair promise of its beginning. Should you be impressed with such an idea, no eloquence of mine could erase it: and I will not surely make an unavailing apology for telling what I hold be the truth on an occasion when it may possibly be useful. Let me rather attempt to propitiate you by what is not a very hackneyed expedient for averting the displeasure of a lady. Yet if my comparison be just, it may entertain you, – if not, you will be sure to find out its deficiencies, and that would put some ladies into good humour with themselves, in which case they are seldom inexorably angry with other people. – Now would it be so very absurd to regard the different religious systems of civilized nations as so many pyramids having each a base, constructed of the same materials, disposed in the same manner? As these pyramids rise, they differ more and more in the materials and style of architecture. The common base consists principally of the idea of an omnipotent and just God, All those nations, I think, who have been able to give us an account of their own conceptions have distinctly expressed this sentiment. The Majesty of one supreme Being towers above a crowd of Pagan and Hindoo deities as well as over the mob of Popish saints. These satraps, agents, messengers, ministers have each his peculiar appointment under the controul of the DESPOT of nature. The material world easily supplied the notion of power; and our propensity to sit in judgment on our neighbour’s conduct and our own – the invisible court of conscience – soon supplied an analogy, strengthened however by visible tribunals, which led to the idea of remunerative justice – and that, with scarce an exception, in another life. Thus man discovered a God, and created an Heaven and an Hell. Now in religious, which can never be totally separated from moral, instruction, let us build up small pyramids after the model of the larger ones. In raising these mental edifices we should be particularly careful not to do as a modern traveller has done by certain pyramidal mountains in Abyssinia – place them with their points downwards. Let us build the foundation firm and strong of the common materials: let us arrange the universal morality of mankind with skill and order, and cement it by the universal principle of religion; Otherwise by that perverse education, which is scarce in earnest but when it is inculcating points of difference and sowing the seeds of discord, we shall still have nothing but crops of holy strife. Our zealots were distinctly typified long beforehand in Cadmus raising a band of cut-throats from the teeth of a serpent. I wish they would survey themselves from time to time in the mirror of this parable. Pray ask some friend to translate the whole passage (Ovid. Metamorph. L. III). This viper brood, you will find, set to murder one another, nobody, not one among themselves, knowing why, Fanaticism, it is true, does not perpetrate its massacres in silence; but poetry abhors its language as much as humanity does its practices. Erasmus indeed thinks that, as Cadmus introduced letters into Greece, the passage alludes to literary controversy. The poet clearly announces an evil of a very different stamp. He could know little of either from history or experience. Loud as the disputing philosophers sometimes were, the petty nuisance, attached to the progress of knowledge, could, not be much, felt before the invention of printing. And the earth had scarce been stained by the bloody contentions of tolerating and tolerated, intolerant and persecuted, sects that perennial source malignant hatred, religious animosity, had not yet sprung up in the human breast.
I wish, Madam, that our preference for the finish of our own pyramid be of so mild and modest a temper, that we may bear to look upon a different superstructure without feeling an irresistable impulse to tumble it down upon our neighbour’s head, and forcibly set our own in its place. ‘Away with this stuff, it is abominable Deism’ – ‘With submission I considered Deism as very well in its place. Your reverence knows best, I have always thought the savage, who only worries an inoffensive animal with his bull-dog, a gentle brute in comparison with him, be he Bishop, Priest, or Deacon, who teaches his FLOCK such tricks that they cannot feed quietly in the common pasture, without falling foul upon the sheep that have learned to bleat in a different key’.
You know that many acute Philosophers have condemned; a large majority of our species to the servitude of perpetual prejudice. They think that however their notions may change, they can never improve; and that, whether heathens or christians, they must always harbour in their minds a gross mythology and be ever insensible to the force of moral obligation. For my part I shall believe, till the trial has been made, that this is either ignorance or calumny of human nature. I am abundantly sensible of the evils that arise from the fanaticism and brutality of the common people; and I am equally persuaded that these horrible qualities themselves originate in the wretched condition of governments. Hitherto, Madam, our political systems have been no better than our physical were a few centuries ago. It was easier to discover the relations that subsist between the planets, than those which ought to subsist between human beings. When the sanguinary glory of conquests and the ruinous splendor of foreign possessions shall be renounced, when men shall be wise enough so to correct their political institutions, that the united strength of nations may be employed in improvements at home instead of destruction abroad, a well-digested system of public instruction will secure the peace of society more effectually than the gallows and the bayonet. Our GAZETTES EXTRAORDINARY, I allow, have a sublimity beyond the strains of Homer and Virgil. I fully sympathize with my countrymen in the pleasure of drenching the soil of Asia and America with British and foreign blood: the perusal of these our heroic Gazettes, is, I am sensible, cheaply purchased by the payment of a few taxes and by the privation of some slight gratifications, which, but for them, every man might procure to himself and to his family. Whenever the glory of the British arms rises before my imagination I feel the genuine glow of patriotism. AND THRICE I SLAY THE SLAIN. I own, and it has always been the opinion of our wife and beneficent governors, that a country cultivated like a garden, an industrious, humane, and peaceful people, cities and towns provided with gratuitous schools, public libraries, baths, and every possible accommodation for rich and poor, had been a paltry objects in Comparison with gazettes full of marches and countermarches, wounds and death, retreats, flights and captivities, once or twice, in ten years of war, a naval victory, and every week, to keep the people in spirits, a merchant-man captured by a pirate, called a privateer. Neither without this glory should we cut such a figure in history: to be sure, the former advantages would last much longer; they would be more universally felt: they would cost much less money, and only sweat, instead of blood. They would promote public happiness both in the preparation and enjoyment. But our ministers and parliaments have been intent upon higher concerns. They know that Glory is both meat and drink to your true Englishman. We could not have existed without those trophies that distinguish the reign of George III, from that of Antoninus Pius.
We have one peculiar advantage. Opinion has fortunately established among us a Political Religion. We can all repeat our constitutional, much better than our church, catechism, and in the same parrot style. And why should we distress ourselves with doubt, or puzzle ourselves with enquiry? All the world knows and we feel that we are now the chosen people. Of course questions like the following are quite superfluous: 1. Whether there be any necessary connexion between the specific form of our political system and the prosperity of agriculture and manufactures? whether they have not flourished under very different systems, and would not flourish more with us, if such and such changes were to take place? 2. Whether within the last twenty years, not to go farther back, our constitution has not permitted our ministers and parliaments to fall into some small mistakes? whether and how it will prevent such mistakes in future? whether we must not all go just as a minister drives? 3. How long it will be before the industry of individuals will redeem the consequences of these mistakes? for our ministers and parliaments are like the lilies of the field: they neither spin nor weave. These choice spirits possess indeed an admirable nostrum for relieving plethoric purses. And it is pretty well for them to spend what men of narrower souls and coarser hands acquire. 4. Whether the trade of Venice, Portugal, &c. was not once, in proportion, as flourishing as the British? whether these states have not, in the hour of their prosperity, crushed as many distant countries, ruined, oppressed, starved, and butchered as many millions of their fellow-creatures? and why then, not enjoying the blessings of the British Constitution, they could possibly rival us both in the glory of Commerce and of Cruelty? Highly as we think of ourselves, we have hardly yet exceeded the Spaniards in the last respect, but we may live in hopes. A few more exterminating wars in India: and we shall match them. 5. Whether this country flourishes by virtue or in spite of its constitution? 6. Whether this fever of conquest may not terminate here as elsewhere in the languor of slow decay?
A book written by one of our orthodox politicians, a gentleman of nerves as tremulous as calves-feet-jelly, now supports my ink-stand. He has seated himself as judge and jury on the life of at least four-and-twenty millions of men, women, and children, and has sentenced the ‘largest part’ to fire and sword for not adopting the British Constitution, and certain great personages seem disposed to execute his sentence of extermination, though they disapprove of the British Constitution ten times more than these poor offenders. To be sure as they are only French, there would be no great harm in cutting their throats, only our soldiers would want some enemy to keep them in wind, when they shall have extirpated the Mysorean Tyrant together with thousands of his subjects, burned a few more villages belonging to our warmest friend and ally the Corgar Rajah, plundered and dispersed the poor women and children, while their fathers and husbands were opportunely absent, fighting for us against Tippoo. At the same time I am sorely concerned for this gentleman’s friends, the Americans, who have equally sinned against the British Constitution, and can still less plead ignorance in mitigation of the sentence. This statesman may have another reason, besides the mere zeal he professes for the good of mankind, for preaching up a political crusade. He may look upon it as a part of the Ways and Means for ridding the world of what Shakespear calls ‘the cankers of a quiet world and a long peace’. At all events he has fully displayed his amiable disposition. If he had but the sword and the arm of the Exterminating Angel, we may be sure he would purify the earth at a few strokes from that mischievous vermin, the French and the Philosophers.
We will now, if you please, quit this Constitution-Politician and his crusade for those, whom we do not desire to become either religious or political crusaders. It is not enough that our plan form a humane disposition in children and insinuate principles proper to regulate their conduct. We must also confer the habit, and teach some arts, of industry. Our pupils must be able to procure a maintenance lest they should be exposed to the temptations of want. Is it an illusion of the imagination, or may the combination of labour with instruction dissipate the gloom that so generally broods over schools, and render instruction chearful? Allow me to pursue this romantic idea. Suppose we have sixty scholars, a school-room, a working-room, a small garden adjacent, and a school-mistress as well as a master. This should be our system. Ten of the scholars should apply to reading and writing, while the others, who should succeed in their turn, are employed in sewing, spinning, making bird-cages, baskets, in short, in some manufacture suitable to their age and sex. While at work, the mistress should encourage and support a conversation, calculated to fix the favourable impressions, we suppose them to derive from books. Such conversations might powerfully stimulate the less advanced and habituate them to that sort of reflection which applies itself to the ordinary affairs of life, and constitutes plain practical sense. In bad weather we suppose them to work in the room. The contributions of the charitable will lay in an original stock of materials. At stated times there might be a sale of the articles, which I hope would be well attended, or they might go to market. The money should be laid out in fresh stock, only part of the profit should be given to the child who had manufactured the articles, and, when sufficiently accumulated, should be laid out for him in something that would please him as well as be of use to him: another part should be given to the matter and mistress, who would then make those exertions to which people are excited by contingent profits. Perhaps it would be prudent to take a small portion from the whole profit, as a fund for buying prizes for those who make the quickest progress in reading and writing. We can easily vary the project in twenty different ways. But what do you think of it? – You shake your head! – Do not be too distrustful, however; It is not a project, but a description. The scheme has been successfully reduced to practice for ten years at least, if I remember right. It has supported itself in various parts of Germany. You will find that good sense also suggested similar ideas to those, who planned that Poor-House, which does so much honour to the town of Shrewsbury and has conferred such substantial advantages upon the inhabitants. They have indeed, and perhaps they could not do otherwise, made some sacrifices to those established absurdities which I endeavoured to expose.
I hope you will think this plan worth examination, You will judge of its plausibility, and you see what experience it has in its favour. I cannot at present offer you any more decisive proofs of its beneficial tendency; It would be worth the trial, if it promised no more than to render schools less like gaols.
Instead of the language of unmeaning compliance, I will take my leave, with a sincere wish for the prosperity of that little institution which occasioned these reflections. No common occurrence would gratify me more than to hear, that I had contributed an hint, capable of promoting the benevolent views of the founder. I do not undoubtedly expect that you should assent to all my observations, or be convinced by all my reasonings. I hope however YOU will meet with nothing in this letter to excite such sensations in your breast as one may imagine a BRAMIN to feel, who, on recovering from reverie, Should find himself eating animal food, or a RABBI, who has unwarily touched Some UNCLEAN THING. Horror at newly discovered truth, or if you please, at iniquities that advance beyond the beaten track of vulgar opinion, is an appearance so familiar that I wonder We have not some appropriate term, analogous to HYDROPHOBIA, to express it. To most ears the first cry of Reason is and always has been intolerable. I am truly sorry for it. But shall we, according to Swift’s phrase, put a gag into her mouth, in order to get rid of her importunities? Before you condemn her to silence, look back upon her former services, and consider what would have been the fate of mankind, if her remonstrances had been always stifled? Should we have been at this day the abject slaves of Papal superstition and Feudal tyranny? or would our condition have been still more deplorable? ‘But every thing is now happily settled; and the audacity of modern discussion, which leaves nothing unexamined, is not merely unnecessary: it is mischievous.’ Such, Madam, was in all ages the joint cry of bigotry, of privileged corporations, and of ignorance, when the best benefactors of mankind arraigned any flagrant abuse before the tribunal of the public. Without depreciating active virtue, I may venture to call philosophers, the lovers and seekers of truth, the best benefactors of mankind; for the sphere of the former is necessarily confined. But to expose one error of practice, or to establish one salutary principle, is to render a service, unlimited both as to extent and duration. We blush when we recollect the treatment, which those, who have eventually delivered us from the evil of despotism and error, received at the hands of our ancestors. But let us not deceive ourselves. They would not experience a kinder welcome from us. The fate of the Prophets of old, is still reserved for those who make the best use of their rational faculties, though they do not alarm our pride by menaces or by pretensions to personal authority. Stupidity is still unsuspicious of the force of the temptation, and must therefore be still incapable of forgiving the sin of those who reason. Bigotry, though not so powerful, is still relentless: and the instinct of Superstition is still tremblingly alive to local or imaginary danger. The HORROR OF ENQUIRY will yet continue strong for half a century. And Persecution, though it may occasionally break forth into open violence, will chiefly travel about, like a Brief, whispering defamation from house to house. Another Locke would only furnish another example of human folly and ingratitude. This is a melancholy prospect: but we may console ourselves by reflecting that the spirit of a Locke is now less likely than ever to be repressed by the displeasure of Colleges and Bishops, the murmurs of ignorance or the fury of fanaticism.
THOMAS BEDDOES.
Printed but not published.