His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent has set a most important example, by introducing the Lancasterian system into the army; having attached a school to his own regiment. The school consists of the children of the privates, and amounts to 220. A young man, a serjeant in the regiment, was trained for the schoolmaster, at the Borough-Road; and the school was instituted at Malden, in Essex, where the regiment was then quartered. Great credit is due to Lieutenant-colonel MLeod and the other officers, who cooperated with their Royal Commander in his benevolent design. The regi ment lately removed its quarters to Dunbar, where the establishment was carried on. Mr Lancaster, on his journey to Scotland, found it in an excellent state of order. By permission of the Duke, a number of these boys went to Edinburgh, to illustrate the system in the lecture delivered there by Mr Lancaster. The regiment is now quartered at Stirling; and the school, at the request of the Magistrates, is kept in the Guildhall of Stirling Castle; many of the town's children participating in its benefits. The Committee have great pleasure in adding, that the commanders of several military depots, and also of militia regiments, have applied to Mr L. for assistance in forming schools. In last March, Mr L. opened a school at Windsor, established by Lieutenant-colonel Newdigate, for the children of the privates of the King's own regiment of Staffordshire militia; and it is hoped that these examples will speedily be followed by all commanders. On joining the Duke of Kent's regiment, if a recruit is found incapable of reading, he is sent to the school; and, as a powerful stimulus to exertion, those who make a good proficiency in learning are put down as duplicate non-commissioned officers. ' Report, p. 19, 20.

Steps have been taken for diffusing the inestimable benefits of this system in foreign countries. The Americans have eagerly adopted it; and schools have been established upon its principles in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and other places. A respectable society, formed at George-Town, Maryland, for promoting the education of the poor, has recently applied to Mr Lancaster for a suitable schoolmaster. General Miranda, before leaving England, visited the Borough School, accompanied by the deputics from the Caraccas; and they formed the resolution of sending over, upon their arrival, two young men, who might be instructed in the principles of the system. In the island of Antigua, a benevolent individual, whose name we regret to find suppressed, has founded schools upon this plan, for the education of above nine hundred persons. The Committee of the-Institution has ve'ry properly assisted him with all the requisite lessons, and other apparatus for the complete outfit of two schools. The leading members of the Institution are, as we have already mentioned, among the most active abolitionists and friends to the improvement of the great African continent. It was clear, therefore, that

they

they would attempt the introduction of the system into those dark and oppressed regions. With this view, when a young African, who had been brought from the West Indies to England, and had consequently acquired his liberty, was presented to them, and found to possess good abilities and dispositions, he was admitted into the establishment in the Borough, and trained for a schoolmaster. His talents and perseverance raised the most sanguine expectations of the success of this humane and well-devised experiment: but unhappily the poor young man died in August, 1810, of a pulmonary complaint. Not discouraged by this melancholy event, the Committee have adopted further measures, with the same benevolent views. "They have taken care that the missionaries Wilhelm and Klein, who are about to visit Africa under the patronage of the very praiseworthy Society for Missionaries to Africa and the East, should receive ample instructions, by a daily attendance at the Borough School, for nearly two months. They have also made a proposal to the African Institution (as we formerly mentioned), to educate and qualify as schoolmasters, two African youths, of good promise, to be selected by the directors of that admirable society. The offer was gratefully accepted; and the Committee express their hopes that much good will be done to the children of the natives of Africa; who, it is understood, are exceedingly desirous to be instructed in what they term, the white man's book. Nescia mens hominum! Little do the poor Africans know the perilous gift they are wishing for; and little do their friends consider how baneful a service they are about to render those helpless objects of their solicitude! Professor Marsh, Mr Wordsworth, and some dozens of political churchmen, have discovered-or have restored the lost invention of the Romish priesthood-that the white man's book' is not to be entrusted with safety to any but the already enlightened few; and that it were better for nations to remain in outer darkness, than be illuminated with the dangerous and uncertain lights which beam from the very sources of Inspiration!

We have now related whatever appeared to us most important in the history of this important system; and we have performed the grateful task of detailing, not indeed the whole of its triumphs, but such passages as may serve for samples of the great and increasing success which has every where attended it. Those who recollect the ferment which it at first excited among certain classes of feeble bigots and clerical jobbers, will easily believe that the events we have been dwelling upon could B: 3

See Review of the Fifth Report, No. XXXVI.

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not but revive all the foolish alarms of the one, and the impo tent spleen of the other. The far less agreeable office now remains to be discharged, of tracing such attempts to counteract it, as those persons have been making with sufficient openness to meet the eye; for a great part of their machinations has been of a nature to shun the light. This we shall do as briefly as possible; and, where the adversaries of the system have been so ill advised as to betake themselves to argument, we shall probably require all the indulgence of our readers, when we detain them with an exposition, or an answer.

It fell to our lot, upon a former occasion, to record the efforts so strenuously and fruitlessly made by the leaders of this. opposition, the late Mrs Trimmer and Mr Archdeacon Daubeny. The press and the pulpit in vain sounded the alarm with which those reverend personages were willing to inspire the Church and the State. The patronage of the King was a tower of strength; Mr Lancaster was not overwhelmed by a cry; and time was given to the good sense of the country, which speedily, and with authority, extinguished the rising flame, Attempts of a different kind were therefore necessary; and it was proposed to wean the Sovereign from his unfortunate predilection in favour of those who wished to diffuse, on the cheapest terms, the most useful kinds of knowledge among his poorer subjects. Persons were not wanting, nor those in the lowest ranks of the church, who volunteered their services on this occasion. But those reverend (we believe we might use ~ the superlative) and enlightened characters mistook the man they had to deal with. They imagined that alarm was the proper engine. To work upon the fears of him who never knew what fear was, seemed to them, in the fulness of their zeal, and out of that abundant knowledge of human nature which their courtly lives had given them, the best mode of accomplishing their object. They remembered the excellent use. which had been made of the No Popery cry; and vainly ima gining that the King had been the dupe of that delusion-that his royal mind had in good earnest been alarmed for the safety of the Church they concluded that it was peculiarly accessible to alarms of this description; and they took every means to magnify the dangers which must result from his Majesty continuing to patronise a sectary, who taught reading, and put the Bible itself into childrens' hands, without the safeguards of proper gloss and commentary, and a regular assortment of articles. We are credibly informed, that the utmost effect of these artifices was, to provoke the steady contempt of the exalted. Personage in question; and that he never could, by any ef

forts,

forts, be induced to get over the first difficulty which met him in the finespun Jesuitical reasonings of those ghostly counsellors, "The evils of being able to read;"-" the dangers of reading the Bible." The tempters soon perceived that they had made another mistake; and, once more, they shifted their ground. They found, that a prelate of immense revenues, and of munificence becoming the wealth whereof he is trustee for the Church, had, about this very time, by a fortunate concurrence of circumstances, begun to patronize Dr Bell, and had founded a school upon his plan. Here, then, was a fair field for. their arts. If the poor must be educated, let them be educated by clergymen of the Establishment. If any thing so unworthy of his station, as patronizing the teachers of ragged beggarlings, must occupy the mind of the Sovereign, let him bestow those favours exclusively on members of the Church. What though Dr Bell's plan is more limited in its efficacy, infinitely inferior in cconomy, crude and imperfect in many of the most. essential parts, still it comes off a right stock, and is wholly in regular, episcopalian hands. Grant that, imperfect as it is, we can scarcely meet with it but on paper; and should find no small difficulty in discovering half a dozen persons, in any part of the island, who had ever seen one of his school rooms ;still the fact is undisputed, that Dr Bell is a churchman, and, though a Scotchman, has received regular episcopal ordination: Whom, therefore, but Dr Bell should a religious monarch, the head of the church, honour with his countenance? Once more the serpent was found more malignant than dangerous: there was the venom and the eye, but there was the rattle too; and he retired to meditate how he might charm more wisely.

The effrontery of the next attempt is more to be admired than its cunning. Finding how vain were all their efforts to work upon the Sovereign, those pious persons, or their coadjutors, bethought them of inflicting upon Mr Lancaster, by the established weapon of falsehood, the very injuries which would have resulted from the Royal patronage being actually withdrawn. They did not scruple to propagate in all quarters the report, that the King had at last opened his eyes to the dangers of the Church, and the merits of Dr Bell, and had given up Mr Lancaster and his system. A lie, however daring, is nothing, without its com plement of circumstances. Among other proofs of the charge which had taken place, it was industriously circulated that his Majesty had withdrawn his annual subscription from the fund: And these reports were generously propagated by the holy and, loyal characters alluded to, at the moment when indisposition had made such ravages in the royal mind, as to render a con tradiction

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tradiction extremely difficult, and, in some measure, to secure them from the dangers consequent upon a detection. The effects of this base contrivance were extremely encouraging to its authors. At last, they had succeeded in reaching the foun: dations of Mr Lancaster's plan. The subscriptions began to fall off in the most alarming manner; and the scheme might have been utterly ruined, had not an authoritative contradiction to the story been obtained from the Royal Family; which, added to the increased zeal of the Prince Regent for its success, once more entirely frustrated the inventions of its enemies. In one of the papers now before us, Mr Lancaster feelingly describes the immediate effects of this vile artifice; and asserts that, to this present day, so industriously was it diffused, accounts of its appearance in remote parts continue to reach him.

Thus foiled in every quarter (for we may safely presume that the junto have used no small portion of their accustomed activity and address upon the Prince Regent also) they appear to have thought an interval of repose their best policy; and resolved to wait for events, as politicians say when things wear + an unsatisfactory aspect or to leave things to Providence, as Bubb Doddington used to do when he had failed in some pi tiful intrigue they remained inactive during the first months: of the Regency. The probable recovery of the King, and their absolute certainty that returning health would exhibit to them once more the hated spectacle of his steadiness to an honest. purpose, prevented them from taking any steps towards excit ing an alarm, which they well knew the Monarch would dis courage. What they can have seen in the Prince, to induce a contrary expectation with respect to his conduct, we are at a loss to fancy. In warmth of attachment to the new system, the son has even gone beyond the father; and we will venture to predict, that, with his crown, he inherits such a portion of that most royal virtue, steadiness towards his friends, as will bring to a still greater shame than they have even yet expe➡~~ rienced, the artful intriguers whose conduct we are unwillingly obliged to contemplate. But whether it is, that the season-of political change and uncertainty is reckoned favourable to church cabals; or that some enemies of the Prince have so far › traduced his character, as to inspire those designing men with hopes; or that they are desperate, and resolved to take their chance, aware that they cannot fall lower certain it is, that the cry of danger to the Church has once more been raised, and in a far louder note, and in much more important quarters, than during any former part of the controversy The