invidiously restricted and accommodated to the prejudices and demands of
one part of the community, that another great division, the one in which
zeal and exertions for the education of the people had been more and
longer conspicuous, was constrained to make an instant and general protest
against it. And at the same time it was understood, that the party in
whose favor it had been so inequitably constructed, were displeased at
even the very small reserve it made from their monopoly of jurisdiction.
It speedily fell to the ground, to the extreme regret of the earnest
friends of popular reformation that a design of so much original promise
should have come to nothing.

All legislative consideration of the subject went into abeyance; and has
so remained, with trifling exception, through an interval in which far
more than a million, in England alone, of the children who were at that
time within that stage of their life on which chiefly a general scheme
would have acted, have grown up to animal maturity, destitute of all that
can, in any decent sense of the word, be called education. Think of the
difference between their state as it is, and what it might have been if
there had at that time existed patriotism, liberality, and moral
principle, enough to enact and carry into effect a comprehensive measure.
The longer the neglect the more aggravated the pressure with which the
subject returns upon us. It is forcing itself on attention with a demand
as peremptory as ever was the necessity of an embankment against the peril
of inundation. There are no indications to make us sanguine as to the
disposition of the most influential classes; but it were little less than
infatuation not to see the necessity of some extraordinary proceeding, to
establish a fortified line between us and--not national dishonor; _that_
is flagrantly upon us, but--the destruction of national safety.

As to national dishonor, by comparison with what may be seen elsewhere, it