第5章 James Mill(5)

The House proceeded against Jones,who was more or less advised by Place in his proceedings.Burdett took the part of Jones,by a paper published in Cobbett's Register ,and was ultimately committed to the tower in consequence.The whole of London was for a time in a state of excitement,and upon the verge of an outbreak.Burdett refused to submit to the arrest.

Mobs collected;soldiers filled the streets and were pelted.Burdett,when at last he was forced to admit the officers,appeared in his drawing-room in the act of expounding Magna Charta to his son.That,it was to be supposed,was his usual occupation of an afternoon.Meetings were held,and resolutions passed,in support of the martyr to liberty;and when his imprisonment terminated on the prorogation of parliament,vast crowds collected,and a procession was arranged to convoy him to his home.Place had been active in arranging all the details of what was to be a great popular manifestation.

To his infinite disgust,Burdett shrank from the performance,and went home by water.The crowd was left to expend its remaining enthusiasm upon the hackney carriage which contained his fellow-sufferer Jones.Jones,in the following December,was sentenced to twelve months'imprisonment for a libel.Cobbett,Burdett's special supporter at this time,was also imprisoned in June 1810.For a time the popular agitation collapsed.Place seems to have thought that the failure was due to Burdett's want of courage,and dropped all communication with him till a later contest at Westminster.

Place was thus at the centre of the political agitation which,for the time,represented the most energetic reforming movement.It was in 1811or 1812that he became acquainted with Mill.9In Mill he recognised a congenial spirit,and a man able to defend and develop principles.He perhaps,as Professor Bain thinks,made advances to Mill upon the strength of the history of India;and in 1814he was certainly endeavouring to raise money to put Mill above the need of precarious hack-work.10The anticipated difficulty of persuading Mill so far to sacrifice his independence was apparently fatal to the scheme.Place was in occasional communication with Bentham,and visited him at Ford Abbey in 1817.He became intimate with the great man;helped him in business affairs;and was one of the disciples employed to prepare his books for publication.11Bentham was the source of philosophy,and Mill only his prophet.But Mill,who was capable of activity in practical affairs,was more useful to a man of the world.The first business which brought them into close connection was the Lancasterian controversy.The strong interest roused by this agitation was significant of many difficulties to come.The average mind had been gradually coming to the conclusion that the poor should be taught to read and write.Sunday schools and Hannah More's schools in Somersetshire had drawn the attention of the religious world to the subject.During the early years of the century the education question had steadily become more prominent,and the growing interest was shown by a singularly bitter and complicated controversy.

The opposite parties fought under the banners of Bell and Lancaster.Andrew Bell,born at St.Andrews,27th March 1753,was both a canny Scot and an Anglican clergyman.He combined philanthropy with business faculties.He sailed to India in 1787with £128,10s in his pocket to be an army chaplain;he returned in 1796with £25,000and a new system of education which he had devised as superintendent of an orphan asylum.He settled in England,published an account of his plan,and did something to bring it into operation.Meanwhile Joseph Lancaster (1770-1838),a young Quaker,had set up a school in London;he devised a plan similar to that of Bell,and in 1803published an account of his improvements in education with acknowledgments to Bell.For a time the two were on friendly terms.Lancaster set about propagating his new system with more enthusiasm than discretion.

His fame rapidly spread till it reached the throne.In 1805George IIIsent for him;the royal family subscribed to his schools;and the king declared his wish that every child in his dominions should be taught to read the Bible.The king's gracious wish unconsciously indicated a difficulty.

Was it safe to teach the Bible without the safeguard of authorised interpretation?

Orthodox opponents feared the alliance with a man whose first principle was toleration,and first among them was the excellent Mrs.Trimmer,who had been already engaged in the Sunday-school movement.She pointed out in a pamphlet that the schismatic Lancaster was weakening the Established Church.The Edinburgh Review came to his support in 1806and 1807;for the Whig,especially if he was also a Scot,was prejudiced against the Church of England.Lancaster went on his way,but soon got into difficulties,for he was impetuous,careless of money,and autocratic.William Allen,with another Quaker,came to his support in 1808,and founded the Royal Lancasterian Society to maintain his school in the Borough Road,and propagate its like elsewhere.Lancaster travelled through the country,and the agitation prospered,and spread even to America.The church,however,was now fairly aroused.Bishop Marsh preached a sermon in St.Paul's,and followed it up by pamphlets;the cause was taken up by the Quarterly Review in 1811,and in the same year the National Society was founded to 'educate the poor in the principles of the Established Church.'Bell had suggested a national system,but the times were not ripe.Meanwhile the controversy became furious.The Edinburgh and the Quarterly thundered on opposite sides,immense importance was attached by both parties to the scheme devised by Bell,and partly adopted by Lancaster.