And, therefore, let me entreat you to
subscribe bountifully to that scheme for which I specially plead this
day.
Let me remind you, very solemnly, that the present dearth of
education in these realms is owing mainly to our unhappy religious
dissensions; that it is the disputes, not of unbelievers, but of
Christians, which have made it impossible for our government to
fulfil one of the first rights, one of the first duties, of any
government in a civilized country; namely, to command, and to compel,
every child in the realm to receive a proper education. Strange and
sad that so it should be: yet so it is. We have been letting, we
are letting still, year by year, thousands sink and drown in the
slough of heathendom and brutality, while we are debating learnedly
whether a raft, or a boat, or a rope, or a life-buoy, is the
legitimate instrument for saving them; and future historians will
record with sorrow and wonder a fact which will be patent to them,
though the dust of controversy hides it from our eyes--even the fact
that the hinderers of education in these realms were to be found, not
among the so-called sceptics, not among the so-called infidels; but
among those who believed that God came down from heaven, and became
man, and died on the cross, for every savage child in London streets.
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