were to be found everywhere in England; and great masses of the

population were getting no instruction at all. Only a few schools

flourished upon the patronage of exceptional parents; all over the

country the old endowed grammar schools were to be found sinking and

dwindling; many of them had closed altogether. In the new great

centres of population multitudes of children were sweated in the

factories, darkly ignorant and wretched and the under-equipped and

under-staffed National and British schools, supported by voluntary

contributions and sectarian rivalries, made an ineffectual fight

against this festering darkness. It was acondition of affairs

clamouring for remedies, but there was an immense amount of

indifference and prejudice to be overcome before any remedies were

possible. Perhaps some day some industrious and lucid historian

will disentangle all the muddle of impulses and antagonisms, the

commercialism, utilitarianism, obstinate conservatism, humanitarian

enthusiasm, out of which our present educational organisation arose.

I have long since come to believe it necessary that all new social

institutions should be born inconfusion, and that at first they

should present chiefly crude and ridiculous aspects. The distrust

of government in the Victorian days was far too great, and the

general intelligence far too low, to permit the State to go about

the new business it was taking up in a businesslike way, to train

teachers, build and equip schools, endow pedagogic research, and

provide properly written school-books. These things it wasfelt

MUST be provided by individual and local effort, and since it was

manifest that it was individual and local effort that were in

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