The history of the Education Acts is very analogous. The literary classes became alarmed at the ignorance of the poor, and instead of allowing the efforts of philanthropists, aided by the growing appreciation of education amongst the labouring class--already giving great promise of providing a true and voluntary remedy for the supposed evil--to work out a system of education on natural and healthy lines of spontaneous evolution, a course which would have added dignity and stability to the domestic life of the parents and given a real and technical system of education to the children--instead of this, the hasty politician rushed forward crying. 'The people do not want education, so we must compel them.' The compulsory and demoralizing character of the means reacts on the otherwise advantageous nature of the end, and the result is a mind-destroying system of cram for the children; summons, fines, and police for the parents. This is how the politician makes education a lovely and desirable thing. It is almost impossible to over-estimate the evils resulting from the State not allowing teachers and parents to adjust the educational arrangements so as to meet the felt requirements of the case. This communal despotism strikes at the very foundation of personal virtue, viz. the home, the instrument by which nature lifts human character above the non-moral sensuousness of the animal world. Let us never forget that the human mind is made up of lower and higher elements, and that the removal of personal duties--the practice-ground of the virtues--favours the development of the lower factors of character at the expense of the higher, of weeds at the expense of flowers.
What else can possibly result from the carrying out of a principle which means the public feeding, clothing, and lodging of children under official superintendence and control? Will it be contended that State officers can know better than parents what is really needed for children? Yet this is what our Free Educationalists are leading us to. The system which robs the parent of one of the noblest motives to effort--the desire to give a good education to his children--which weakens the sense of duty and takes away a wholesome stimulus to the mental and moral faculties, is only the beginning of an evil that menaces civilization and threatens to swallow up all natural distinctions and relationships in a low and promiscuous communism. This bribe of parental irresponsibility--this patent method of shirking duties--which the politician offers us in exchange for our manhood, is a scheme for encouraging the race to cast itself forth into the moral darkness of a world where the parents are all childless and the children all orphans.