or by the fortnight or month. We regret, however, that there is a really worthy class which such a qualification would exclude,––ploughmen, labourers, and country mechanics, who reside permanently in humble cottages, the property of the owner of the soil, and who, though their course through life lies on the bleak edge of poverty, are God-fearing, worthy men, at least morally qualified to give, in the election of a teacher, an honest and not unintelligent voice. And yet, hitherto at least, we have failed to see any principle which a British statesman would recognise as legitimate, on which this class could be included in the educational franchise, and their dangerous neighbours of the same political status kept out. There is yet a third very important class whom we would fain see in possession of the educational franchise,––those householders of Scotland who till the soil as tenants, whether with or without leases, or whether the annual rent which they pay amounts to three or to three thousand pounds. The tillers of the soil are a fixed class, greatly more permanent, even where there exists no lease, than the mere tenant householders; and they include, especially in the Highlands of Scotland, and the poorer districts of the low country, a large proportion of the country’s parentage. They are in the main, too, an eminently safe class, and not less so where the farms are 42 small and the dwellings upon them mere cottages––to which, save for the surrounding croft or farm, no franchise could attach––than where they live in elegant houses, and are the lessees of hundreds of acres. And such are the three great classes to which, as composing the solid body of the Scottish nation––to the exclusion of little more than the mere rags that hang loosely on its vestments––would we extend, did we possess the power, the educational franchise.
In order, however, to render a franchise thus liberally restricted more safe and salutary still, we would demand not only certain qualifications on the part of the parents and ratepayers of the country, without which they could not be permitted to vote, but also certain other qualifications on the part of the country’s schoolmasters, without which they could not be voted for. We would thus impart to the scheme such a twofold aspect of security as that for which in a purely ecclesiastical matter we contended, when we urged that none but Church members should be permitted to choose their own ministers; and that none but ministers pronounced duly qualified in life, literature, and doctrine, by a competent ecclesiastical court, should they be permitted to choose. There ought to exist a teaching Faculty as certainly as there exists a medical or legal Faculty, or as there exists in the Church what is essentially a preacher-licensing Faculty. The membership of a Church are unfitted in their aggregate character to judge respecting at least the literature of the young licentiate whom, in their own and their children’s behalf, they call to the pastoral charge;––the people of a district, however shrewd and solid, are equally unqualified to determine whether the young practitioner of medicine or of law who settles among them is competently acquainted with his profession, and so a fit person to be entrusted with the care of their health or the protection of their property. And hence the 43 necessity which exists in all these cases for testing, licensing, diploma-giving courts or boards, composed of men qualified to decide regarding those special points of ability or acquirement which the people, as such, cannot try for themselves. In no case, however, are courts of this nature more imperatively required than in the case of the schoolmaster. Neither the amount of literature which he possesses, nor yet his mastery over the most approved modes of communicating it, can be tested by the people, who, as parents and ratepayers, possess the exclusive right to make choice of him for their parish or district school; and hence the necessity that what they cannot do for themselves should be previously done for them by some competent court or board, and that no teacher who did not possess a licence or diploma should be eligible to at least an endowed seminary supported by the public money. With, of course, the qualifications of the mere adventure-teacher, whether supported by Churches or individuals, we would permit no board to interfere. As to the composition of the board itself, that, we hold, might be determined on very simple principles. Let the College-bred teachers of Scotland, associated with its University professors, select for themselves, out of their own number, a dean or chairman, and a court or committee, legally qualified by Act of Parliament stringently to try all teachers who may present themselves before them, in order to be rendered eligible for a national school, and to grant them licences or diplomas, legally representative of professional qualification. Whether a teacher, on his election by the people, might not be a second time tried, especially on behalf of the State and the ratepayers, by a Government inspectorship, and thus a check on the board be instituted, we are not at present called on to determine; but on this we are clear, that the certificate of no Normal School, in behalf of its own pupils, ought to be received otherwise than as a mere makeweight 44 in the general item of professional character; seeing that any such document would be as much a certificate of the Normal School’s own ability in rearing efficient teachers, as of the pedagogical skill of the teachers which it reared. The vitiating element of self-interest would scarce fail to induce, ultimately at least, a suspicious habit of self-recommendation.
Such, then, in this matter, is our full tale of qualification, pedagogical and popular, of the educators of the country on the one hand, and of the educational franchise-holders of the country on the other. And now we request the reader to mark one mighty result of the arrangement, which no other yet set in opposition to it could possibly produce. There are in Scotland about one thousand one hundred national schools, supported by national resources; and, of consequence, though fallen into the hands of a mere sect, which in some localities does not include a tithe of the population, they of right belong to the Scottish people. And these schools of the people that extension of the educational franchise which we desiderate would not fail to restore to the people. It would put them once more in possession of what was their own property de facto at the Revolution (for at that period, when, with a few inconsiderable exceptions, they were all of one creed, the ministry of the Established Church virtually represented them), and of what has been de jure their property ever since. But by the ministry of no one Church can the people be represented now. The long rule of Moderatism,––the consequent formation of the Secession and Relief Churches,––the growth of Independency and Episcopacy,––and last, but not least in the series, the Disruption, and the instantaneous creation of the Free Church, have put an end to that state of things for ever. The time has in the course of Providence fairly come, when the people must be permitted in this matter to represent themselves; and there is 45 one thing sure,––the struggle may be protracted, but the issue is certain. Important, however, as are our parish schools, and rich in associations so intimately linked to the intellectual glory of the nation, that, were they but mere relics of the past, the custodiership of them might well be most desirable to the Scottish people, they represent but a small part of the stake involved in the present all-engrossing movement. It seeks also to provide from the coffers of the State––on a broad basis of popular representation, and with the reservation of a right on the part of the people to supplement whatever instruction the State may not or cannot supply––that fearful educational destitution of the nation which is sinking its tens and hundreds of thousands into abject pauperism and barbarous ignorance, and which neither Churches nor Societies can of themselves supply. It is the first hopeful movement of the age; for our own Free Church educational movement, though perhaps second in point of importance, only serves irrefragably to demonstrate its necessity.
It is, we repeat, to the people of Scotland, and not to any one of the Churches of Scotland, that our scheme of a widely-based and truly popular franchise would restore the Scottish schools. Mr. George Combe is, however, quite in the right in holding that religion is too intimately associated with the educational question, and too decidedly a force in the country, to be excluded from the national seminaries, ‘unless, indeed, Government do something more than merely omit the religious element.’[7] All is lost, Mr. Combe justly infers, on the non-religious side of the 46 question, if the introduction of the Bible and Shorter Catechism be not prohibited by Act of Parliament; for, if not stringently prohibited, what Parliament merely omits doing, a Bible and Catechism loving people will to a certainty do; and the conscience of the phrenologist and his followers will not fail to be outraged by the spectacle of Bible classes in the national schools, and of State schoolmasters instilling into the youthful mind, by means of the Shorter Catechism, the doctrine of original sin and the work of the Spirit. Nay, more; as it is not in the power of mere Acts of the Legislature to eradicate from the hearts of a people those