THE ECLECTIC REVIEW, FOR JULY, 1812. Art. I. Report of the Military Male Orphan Asylum at Madras, with Art. II. The British System of Education, being a complete epitome of the Art. III. Report of J. Lancaster's Progress from the Year 1798, with IN this country it is no longer a question whether the poor 3 I intelligent persons, that the mischiefs to social order and the subordination of ranks, which a dastardly policy so confidently predicted would arise from the general diffusion of knowledge, were perfectly visionary. They have not failed to observe, what was in itself so obvious, that, while the poor receive the advantages of education, and thereby rise somewhat higher in the scale of rational existence, the superior instruction to which the rich will in consequence have recourse, will always preserve a sufficient distance between the classes into which society is distributed. They are satisfied, it is only despotic governments that have reason to be alarmed at the intellectual improvement of their subjects. Free states, on the contrary, whose principal object is the prosperity and happiness of the people, must be indebted for their permanence and stability, to a general persuasion of their utility; a persuasion which will be sure to take deeper root, as the mass of the subjects are well instructed, and thus enabled to attach themselves to the civil polity, not so much from prejudice and custom, as from a clear perception of the benefits it affords them. The affectation of charity, which objected to the education of the poor, from the evils in which, it was pretended, knowledge would involve them, has likewise sunk into contempt. That education is injurious to the poor, as it serves to proinote indolence and vanity, is now universally regarded as among the most groundless of suppositions. Knowledge does not provide food for the hungry, or clothing for the naked. Industry is quite as necessary after instruction, as it was before; and the only difference is, that those who have been instructed, are able to turn the fruits of their labour to the best account. Nor is the other part of the charge more substantial. As education becomes general, its advantages cease to become excitements to vanity; since no man is vain of what he has in common with his neighbours. Nothing can be more untrue than the assertion, which was at one time so vehemently reiterated, that the diffusion of knowledge is the diffusion of misery. It is, on the contrary, the property of knowledge to elevate and refine our nature, to enable a man to find satisfaction in his own bosom,-and, not only to produce a taste for intellectual delights, but to destroy the keen relish for gratifications purely sensual. Contemplate man, as a being capable of religion, and designed for conscious existence in a future state, and it will appear still more desirable that he should be well educated, whatever be his condition in life while of the charity that it becomes us to cultivate as Christians, there cannot be a more appropriate object than the education of the poor. To them an especial regard has |