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THE BENTHAMITE MOVEMENT FOR NATIONAL EDUCATION
ITS IMPACT ON THE CREATION OF THE
EDUCATION DEPARTMENT IN
ENGLAND, 180 7-1839
by
SUN HONG CHOY, B.A., M.A.
A DISSERTATION
IN
HISTORY
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Approved
Accepted
December, 1975
^ ( 2 ' - 1 \ — •
, -7/, TABLE OF CONTENTS
' PREFACE iii
Chapter
I. BENTHAM'S THEORIES ON THE STATE 1
II. THE CENTRAL ADMINISTRATIVE STATE AND PUBLIC EDUCATION 15
III. THE BENTHAMITES AND THE BEGINNING OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM 31
IV. THE BENTHAMITES AND EDUCATION IN THE 1820s . 6 2
V. THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ISSUE IN THE REFORMED PARLIAMENT 9 5
VI. THE CENTRAL SOCIETY OF EDUCATION AND THE MANCHESTER STATISTICAL SOCIETY 117
VII. THE CREATION OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE PRIVY
COUNCIL ON EDUCATION 138
VIII. CONCLUSION 15 7
BIBLIOGRAPHY 165
11
PREFACE
The nature and the extent of Benthamite influence
on nineteenth-century legislative, administrative, and
political reform have been subjects of considerable con
troversy in recent years among administrative historians.
In a seminal study, A. V. Dicey argued that the Bentha-
2
mites were advocates of laissez-faire and individualism.
In 1948 J. B. Brebner, however, rejected the idea that
the years 1825-1870 represented a period of individualism.
These years, he contended, saw the beginnings of state
There are a number of terms used to describe Jeremy Bentham and his school, each with a som.evrhat different emphasis and point of view. The word "utilitarians" is the most embracing and comprehensive. Elie Halevy coined the phrase "philosophic radicals" to distinguish them from other contemporary radicals. "Benthamites" as used here means contemporaries of Bentham or those who lived in the next generation and who agreed with the essentials of Bentham's political and social thought and who participated in bringing about Bentham's anticipated goal, consciously or unconsciously, regardless of their personal connection with Bentham himself. For a more confined and articulated usage of the term, "Benthamite," see S. E. Finer, "The Transmission of Benthamite Ideas 1820-50," Studies in the Growth of Nineteenth-Century Government, ed. by Gillian Sutherland (London, 1972), pp. 11-32.
2 A. V. Dicey, Lectures upon the Relation between
Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth CeTitury (London, 1905) , pp. 171-75.
iii
iv
intervention on an extensive scale and in great variety.
He claimed that the many forms of state intervention were
"basically Benthamite—Benthamite in the sense of con
forming closely to that forbidding, detailed blueprint 3
for collective state, the Constitutional Code."
As a result of Brebner's article, the impact of
Bentham and his followers has been explored by numerous
other scholars. Most of the interpretations which have
now appeared may be placed in one or another of four
categories. Dicey had already cast Bentham as an advo
cate of laissez-faire and had ascribed to him consider
able influence in determining the laissez-faire character
of mid-Victorian England. Brebner, interpreting him as
a collectivist, saw Bentham as the largest force behind
the introduction of collectivism into the mid-Victorian
Society. David Roberts and Oliver MacDonagh have, how
ever, more recently argued that Bentham was not a col
lectivist and that his ideas had little influence on the
emerging governmental institutions, agencies, and adminis
trative techniques. Although they maintain that the
middle quarters of the nineteenth century witnessed the
origin of "the welfare state" and "the collectivist
system of the present day," they argue that fundamentally
3 J. B. Brebner, "Laissez Faire and State Inter
vention in Nineteenth-Century Britain," The Journal of Economic History, VIII (1948), 62.
V
the "nineteenth-century revolution in government" was
4 caused by natural, self-generating bureaucratic growth.
However, Roberts and MacDonagh have themselves provoked
new lines of criticism. Henry Parris argues that Ben
thamite ideology did influence the development of the
administrative state, although its influence was "working
less consistently in favor of state intervention" than
Brebner had supposed. He maintains that "laissez-
faire and state intervention were equally characteristic
developments of the middle quarters of the nineteenth
century, and it is not necessary to assume that they
were in contradiction to one another." The application
of the principle of utility "led to considerable exten
sions both of laissez-faire and of state intervention
4 0. MacDonagh, "The Nineteenth-Century Revolution
in Government: A Reappraisal," Historical Journal, I (1958), 65-67; David Roberts, "Jeremy Bentham and the Victorian Administrative State," Victorian Studies, II (March 1959), 193-210. Both further developed their theses in their books: 0. MacDonagh, A Pattern of Government Growth, 1800-1860; The Passenger Acts and their Enforcement (London, 19 61) , and David Roberts, The Victorian Origins of the Welfare State (New Haven, 19 61).
5 H, Parris, "The Nineteenth-Century Revolution in
Government: A Reappraisal Reappraised," Historical Journal, III (1960), 17-37. See also H. Parris, Constitutional Bureaucracy: The Development of British Central Administration since the Eighteenth Century (London, 1969). Parris's thesis was strongly supported in Jenifer Hart, "Nineteenth-Century Social Reform: A Tory Interpretation of History," Past and Present, XXX (1965), 39-61. The above citation is from L. J. Hume, "Jeremy Bentham and the Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government," Historical Journal, X (1967), 362.
Vl
simultaneously."
The debate surrounding Benthamite political
philosophy is, thus, twofold. First is the question of
the "ideological identity" of Benthamism; did it have a
laissez-faireist or a collectivist tendency. The other
is the "historical identity" of Benthamism; to what ex
tent did it influence British policy makers and social
reformers during the years when Britain was being trans-7
formed into a modern administrative state.
The growth of a system of national education,
the topic of this study, was chosen in order to trace the
extent of Benthamite ideas on British educational reform.
In addition, Benthamite educational activities provide
a case study of the development of centralized adminis
tration in the first half of the nineteenth century.
The development of a national system of English education
was much slower than on the continent. The creation of
the education department in the Privy Council in 1839
was a compromise between the political and social "estab
lishment" and the Benthamite reformers. Melbourne's
Whig ministry played the role of midwife. It is a
Parris, "The Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government," pp. 34-36.
7 Gertrude Himmelfarb, "Benthami Scholarship and
the Bentham 'Problem,'" Journal of Modern History, XLI (June 1969 ), 190-193.
VI1
necessary, but difficult, task to determine how an idea
activated the reform of a society which by nature was
reluctant to change. The thesis that only the day-to
day solutions to practical problems caused change in the o
social and political system seems narrow and shortsighted.
Rather, it appears more probable that Bentham's educational
proposals showed the necessity, the practical expediency,
of establishing a system of national education in order
to solve the growing problem of popular education in an
emerging mass society.
During the course of researching and writing this
dissertation, I have incurred numerous obligations. I
would first like to thank the librarians and curators of
the Texas Tech University Library, the British Museum,
the Public Record Office, the Ministry of Education, the
Institute of Historical Research, and the Watson Library
of University College, London. I would especially like
to express miy deep appreciation to the merrJoers of my
doctoral committee for their needed encouragement and
suggestions: Dr. Brian L. Blakeley, Dr. Jacquelin Collins,
Dr. Otto M. Nelson, Dr. Benjamin H. Newcomb, Dr. Key Ray
Chong, and Dr. William E. Oden. I am most grateful to
g D. Roberts, "Jeremy Bentham and the Victorian
Administrative State," pp. 204, 206, and Victorian Origins of the Welfare State, pp. 73-74. See also criticism of the "Tory interpretation" in Hart, "Nineteenth-Century Social Reform" pp. 57ff.
Vlll
Mr. Phil Simpson for his generous financial contribution
and to Dr. David M. Vigness and Dr. James V. Reese for
their help in obtaining the financial support of The
Graduate School of Texas Tech University for my research
trip to London. I would also like to express my gratitude
to Dr. James V. Reese, Dr. William R. Johnson, Dr. Thomas
G. Manning, Dr. Alwyn Barr, and the committee members
for their personal donations. Finally, I would like to
thank my sister Woosun and her husband Dr. Pill-Soon
Song for their encouragement and support.
CHAPTER I
BENTHAM'S THEORIES ON THE STATE
Jeremy Bentham was a faithful disciple of the
Enlightenment. He taught his age the importance of
rational criticism and systematic reform, firmly believing
in progress and in the rationality in mankind. According
to Bentham, man is a creature of sensation, of pleasure
and pain. Moral judgment is simply one case of the
judgment of happiness. Man's failure to attain his end
of happiness is simply, therefore, the result of ignorance
or miscalculation. Knowledge can show men their true
state and enable them to calculate aright. Reason is
patently the instrument which alone can be productive of
any useful effect. To a Benthamite, ethics is to be
scientific and experimental. There is no moral judgment
such as in Kantian ethics. Bentham went so far in re
jecting the a priori and the transcendental that he denied
any qualitative difference in pleasure and happiness.
Bentham was a thoroughgoing optimistic rationalist.
David Lyons, Iri the Interest of the Governed ^ Study in Bentham's Philosophy of Utility and Law TOxford , 1973), pp. 22-23.
and to him this spirit of rationalism required the admi
nistrative growth of the modern state. Bentham was one
of the political theorists who emphasized the view that
the state is an institution. He was convinced of the
importance of institutions in determining behavior,
institutions which were to be built on the basis of
exact, purposeful calculation. Bentham taught men to
ask whether an institution, including the state itself,
was useful, efficient, and conducive to human happiness, 2
not whether it agreed with custom or tradition. Pri
marily a legal reformer, Bentham believed in the ameliora
tive function of the state and exemplified the late
eighteenth-century desire for social improvement. He
provided a new basis for "improvement" in his An Intro
duction to the Principle of Morals and Legislation (1789).
He thought that laws which were based on scientific
principle would, in the final analysis, be more effective
in reforming society than those which were not.
Bentham hated revolutions almost instinctively,
because they were the work of passion. Revolutions were 3
not ascribable to the purely intellectual movement alone. Bentham was hostile to the principles of the French
2 David Baumgardt, Bentham and the Ethics of Today
(Princeton, 1952), pp. 63ff. 3 Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians (New
York, 1950), p. 194.
Revolution: the ideas of natural rights and the social
contract theory. He criticized these theories because
4 they served only as catchwords in politics. In the name
of utility, he refuted the "Declaration of the Rights
of Man and of the Citizen." He denied flatly that man
had any natural rights, because it was law and law alone 5
that was the source of rights. He hated the abstract
character of the "rights of man" theory. Rights existed
only by virtue of law; they did not precede society, but
were produced by it. He referred to natural rights as
"simple nonsense; natural imprescriptable rights, rhetor-
ical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts." What rights a
man had were, according to Bentham, not natural but granted
or allowed man by law. Bentham allowed no place for
natural rights that stood outside the law. As the good
ness of the law itself was based on its utility, the
theory of natural rights was replaced by the theory of
utility.
John Stuart Mill, "On Bentham (1838)," Jeremy Bentham: Ten Critical Essays, ed. by Bhikhu Parekh (London, 1974), p. 8.
5 Jeremy Bentham, The Theory of Legislation, ed. by C. K. Ogden (London, 1931), p. 84.
^Ibid.
7 W. L. Davidson, Political Thought in England;
the Utilitarians from Bentham to Mill (London, 1947) , p. 47.
Bentham also rejected the theory that man had a
political obligation to a social contract. To Bentham,
there was no evidence that such a contract ever existed,
and, in addition, the end of such a contract was nonethe
less a utility. The sole justification of government was g
not contract but the satisfaction of hur.ian needs. How
are the people to know whether the governor has broken
his contract? The only test that would enable him to
distinguish between trivial arid serious illegality was
the test of utility.
Bentham in his first published work, A Fragment
on Government (1776), attacked the Whig notion of a
social contract. He argued that the state was based,
not on consent, but on the habit of obedience. The state
existed because of its obvious utility. William Elack-
stone in his writing had tried to base his defense of the
British Constitution on the concept of a social contract.
Bentham's attack on Blackstone's view of the contractual
origin of government was based on his exasp>eration with
tradition, his desire for efficiency, and his faith in 9
reason. Bentham denied every form of the contract
p Dwight V7aldo, The Adm.inistrative State (New York,
1948), p. 77. 9 John Bowie, Politics and Opinion in the Nineteenth
Century (New York, 19 54) , p. 6 3; Baum.gardt, Bentham and the Ethics of Today, p. 6 3.
theory, regardless of whether the contract was thought
to exist between the governor and the governed or am.ong
the governed.
The starting point of Bentham's political theory
was his conviction that there was a need for extensive
reforms in English law and judicial procedure. English
law, in fact, had grown rather than been made. The Tories
praised the English law as a natural growth in accordance
with divine providence. Bentham. v/as against this tradi
tion of common law. He thought that statute law m.ust be
suprem.e and that a popularly responsible parliament must
be entirely free to legislate. He did not agree that
common or judge-made law was supreme.
Bentham,'s opposition to the commion law tradition
reveals his rational individualism^ According to him,
the community was sim.ply a fictitious body, and the public
interest v as an "abstract termi" covering the miass of
individual interests. Individual interests were the
only real interests, and he argued that "the interest of
the comiaunity then is . . . the sum of the interests of
the several members who composed it." In other words.
Jeremy Bentham, The Works_, ed. by John Bov/rinc (11 vols,; Reprinted ed., New York, 1962), I, "Principles of the Civil Code," 321.
Works, I, "An Introduction to the Principle of Morals and Legislation," 2.
the interest of the community was an aggregate of partic
ular interests, even though in times of "extraordinary
public danger," such as war, individuals would develop
a "social interest stronger than the interests peculiar
12 to themselves." Therefore, the ultimate reason why
men submitted to the requirem.ents of law and governm.ent
was not that they or their ancestors had promised to do
so but that it was in their interest to do so.
The principle of utility was designed to make
the individual in every society a free and responsible
agent, leading a life of conscious deliberation and choice,
In this sense, utilitarianism V7as a movemient for individ
ualism, seeking to liberate the individual from the
slavery of custom. This individualistic aspect of utili
tarianism, therefore, can be easily understood by its
claim for having caused the breakdown of aristocratic
tradition of English society. When Bentham opposed the
unreasonable tradition of Tory conservatives, his argu
ments often paralleled those of Whig liberals. But he
was not a liberal in the Whig sense when he rejected
their theories of natural rights and of a social contract.
The foundation of legislative utilitarianism was
the belief that the end of huir.an existence v/as the attain
ment of happiness or, in other words, faith in the
-^^Works, IX, "Constitutional Code," 127.
principle of utility and the assurance that the aim of
13 law was the promotion of human happiness. In The
Theory of Legislation (180 2), Bentham argued that once
society accepted the principle of utility, utility could
be achieved by the simple expedient of legislating it
into being. Legislation was a science based on a rational
understanding of the characteristics of human nature.
14 Therefore, "all social phenomena were reducible to laws."
Bentham believed that legislation was merely the process
of shaping some fundamental rules so as to fit the super
ficial differences of a particular nation. He believed
that the substantive requirements for all communities
were the same.
Bentham adopted the theory that the conflicting
egoisms of men could be harmonized only artificially by
the legislators. In other words, individual interests
could artificially be harmonized by legislation, inflicted
by the sovereign employing the felicific calculus of the
greatest happiness of the greatest number. Until men
were fully educated and until they had sufficiently dis
ciplined themselves to forego immediate pleasures for the
sake of lasting happiness, however, a "severe schoolmaster"
13 . Dicey, Law and Public Opinion, p. 142.
14' Elie Halevy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism,
trans, by Mary Morris (London, 1928), p. 433.
8
was necessary in the form of law. For Bentham, it also
meant that human legislators must assist men to avoid
harmful acts by artificially weighting such acts with
the pains of punishment. Therefore, the primary influ
ence determining human character was in the first instance
the legislators and their commands, i.e., the form of
government and the laws. Bentham hoped to make of the
legislative body a machine to grind out a new order and
to create out of the laws a code of pains and pleasures
so finely adjusted as to produce almost complete individ
ual well-being and social harmony. By legislation and
education he believed that the harmony of interests in
15 society could be realized.
Bentham believed in good government rather than
in liberty. He thought that since men were fundamentally
selfish, government should be benevolent and teach them
to be aware of their own best interests. Bentham ques
tioned the logic of the assumption that the proper object
of all government was to establish the most perfect
liberty, arguing that government could operate only at
the expense of liberty. Liberty was possible only where
government exercised no discipline. Therefore, the
•^^Ibid. , p. 478; Baumgardt, Bentham, pp. 416-428.
1 6 Works, IX, "Constitutional Code," 123.
end of government must be happiness and not liberty. The
task of determining what constituted an abuse of liberty
was left to the legislators, but, to Bentham, every law
17 was a restriction on liberty. The worst government
ever known was infinitely better than no government at
all, because the governmental regulation of society would
18 promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
Given the necessity of government and law, the
nature of the government most beneficial to the members
of society was of great concern to Bentham, In explaining
the origin of the state, he accepted the postulate that
political society consisted essentially of governors and
subjects and that it was constituted by the obedience of
19 subjects to the governor's commands or laws, Bentham
stated that:
When a number of persons (whom we may style subjects) are supposed to be in the habit of paying obedience to a person, or an assemblage of persons, of a known and certain description (whom we may call governor or governors), such persons together (subjects and governors) are said to be in a state of political society.^0
What makes a state is the habit of command in the few
• " Works, I, "Principles of the Civil Code," 301.
18 James Marshall, Swords and Symbols, the Technique
of Sovereignty (New York, 1939) , p. 10. 19 Works, I, "A Fragment on Government," 261-62.
20 Ibid., p. 263.
10
coupled with the habit of submission in the many. "Are
those habits formed? He is lawful sovereign. Is it as
21 yet unformed? He is an usurper." That is Bentham's
description of a state's origin.
Bentham, along with Thomas Hobbes and John Austin,
believed that from a legal point of view the sovereign
22
authority must be absolute. Bentham argued that "the
supreme governor's authority though not infinite, must
unavoidably, I think, unless v/here limited by expressed 23 convention, be allowed to be indefinite." Bentham
defined sovereignty as legally unrestricted power, saying
that "by the sovereignty it means the supreme constitutive
authourity and the sovereignty is in the hands of the 24 people." The first sentence of the above quotation
shows the relation between sovereignty and the legislature
To Bentham, it was impossible to set predetermined limits
on sovereign power, because whatever the sovereign de
clared to be the law was the law. He believed that there
must be a single source of authority in the institutions
of government, and that this must be located in the
21 Mary Peter Mack, Jeremy Bentham, an Odyssey of
Ideas, 1748-1792 (London, 1962), p. 179. 22
Marshall, Swords and Symbols, p. 6.
VJorks, I, "A Fragment on Government," 288.
^"^Works, IX, "Constitutional Code," 96.
11
legislature. The second sentence of the above quotation
also, however, reveals his ideas on the relation between
sovereignty and the people. Bentham accepted the complete
legal sovereignty of parliament. He believed that ulti
mate political sovereignty should be in the people; only
then can the interest of government be made to coincide
with the general interest. The Constitutional Code
states the point quite clearly: "the hands in which
the supreme legislative power is lodged ought to be lo-
25
cated by the great body of the people." In short, Ben
tham tried to clarify the triangular relationship between
sovereignty, the people, and law. Law is the expression
of the sovereignty of the people.
Once through the device of representative democ
racy the commands of the legislators or the laws are
identified with the people's will, the executive and
judiciary become nothing more than creatures to carry
them into effect. In other words, if Bentham's doctrine
of the sovereignty of the legislature is accepted, the
independence of the judiciary is questioned. Bentham
denied that any limits could be set on the authority of
the supreme body (the legislature), and opposed the grant
^^Ibid., p. 114.
2 6 Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and
India (Oxford, 1959), p. 72.
12
to judges of authority to make or unmake law, directly
27
or indirectly. Bentham did not believe that the jury
system could play the part of an omniscient providence
and by itself harmonize all interests. The fundamental
theme of the Constitutional Code was that the legislature
must be omnipotent: it should be subject to no restric-
2 8 tions on the topics on which it could legislate. Bentham declared his hostility to any idea of a balance or
29
a separation of powers. This is the principle of
omnicompetence. For Bentham, sovereignty was single and
indivisible; its instrument v/as law speaking the language
of commands. Eric Stokes illustrates it in these words:
"Bentham's problem was to make Hobbes's Leviathan the 30 slave of the demos."
In the Constitutional Code Bentham transferred
the sovereignty from the king to the people. It meant
the depersonalization of sovereignty. However, the
attributes of absoluteness in sovereignty remain although
its location was altered. The sovereignty of the people,
the absolute powers of the majority, is as arbitrary in
law and can be as harmful in its consequences as the
^"^Works, IX, "Constitutional Code," 411-412.
^^Ibid., p. 430.
2 9 Stokes, The English Utilitarians, p. 72.
13
sovereignty of the monarch or the absolute power of a
single man. To prevent this arbitrariness Bentham's idea
of constitutional law was formulated. Sovereignty is
omnipotent, and yet it can be manufactured by a volun
tary arrangement among the individual members of society.
The arrangement is the constitutional law, which represents
the ultimate source of all political power and supplies
31 the motives for obedience.
Immediately following the discussion of the origins
of the state in the Constitutional Code, Bentham proposed
the spirit of constitutionalism, the foundation of the
modern administrative state. Even though Bentham viewed
government as "one vast evil" under the general doctrine
that "every where the whole official establishment is a
32 corruptive establishment," he saw in government an
instrument for active social innovation. The central
government alone could maintain the continual advance of
rationalism, knowledge, and science and, at the same time,
eradicate the evils and abuses of industrial England.
Bentham saw the need for a strong, benevolent government
and an efficient, uniform administration, for which he
had established his constitutional scheme. This adminis
trative machine would transform into concrete practical
31 Stephen, The English Utilitarians, II, 30 3. Works, IX, "Constitutional Code," 24, 67.
14
arrangements the cloudy, metaphysical notion of the
general will expounded by the French revolutionaries.
Of all the areas needing the attention of the centralized,
administrative state none was more pressing than education
CHAPTER II
THE CENTRAL ADMINISTRATIVE STATE
AND PUBLIC EDUCATION
In 1830 Bentham published the first volume of his
Constitutional Code in which he outlined an elaborate
scheme for a modern administrative state based on the
spirit of constitutional law. Two years later he died.
The Constitutional Code represented his final conclusions
on the means for systematic reform of the old society.
Bentham treated law as the fundamental instrument of
government. He tried to establish in the legislature
a monopoly of legislative activity and authority, to
subordinate administrative activity to the legislature,
to define and limit the authority and discretion of
administrators, including the monarch, under the consti
tutional law, and to contribute to the creation of a
complete code of law.
One very significant aspect of his Constitutional
Code was Bentham's insistence on the need for a large.
L. J. Hume, "Jeremy Bentham and the Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government," Historical Journal, X (1967) , 375.
15
16
central administration staffed by paid and trained experts
chosen by examination. Bentham wanted the administrative
state to be active and effective; only the centralized
administration could reconcile individual liberty with
the collective welfare and maintain order and justice in
2
social affairs. For over a century, Locke's conception
of government as a institution needed to secure and to
maintain private property had been unquestioned. Now,
Bentham argued that the true duty of government was not
to secure property but to achieve the greatest good of 3
the greatest number. He assumed the necessity of change.
Bentham's elaborate scheme of central administra
tion shows how far he had reached ahead of his times
toward the modern conception of social service. As Dwight
Waldo argues, the modern administrative state is in a 4
sense a collectivist society. In the Constitutional Code,
Bentham demanded manhood suffrage, the secret ballot, and
a single-chamber legislature. The Code gave ample powers
to thirteen ministers who were to preside over an exten
sive central bureaucracy. Trained judges, a simple rule
of evidence, and a codified law would guarantee justice.
2 Bentham, Works, IX, "Constitutional Code," 241. 3 C. R. Love11, English Constitutional and Legal
History (New York, 1962), p. 447. 4 Waldo, Administrative State, p. 66.
17
Bentham cried for public, secular education—replacing
prejudicial aristocratic and religious education, as we
shall see later—and effective police, good roads, and 5
efficient poor relief.
Bentham's blueprint for an administrative state ^
was translated into the reality of the mid-Victorian
bureaucracy. Bentham had a great impact on the intellec
tual climate of the reform era. The passing of the Reform
Act in 1832 should be understood as a first step toward
the realization of the teaching of Bentham. The Factory
Act of 1833 and the Poor Law Amendment Act of 18 34 were
greatly influenced by the arguments of Edwin Chadwick,
who was one of the most stubbornly orthodox disciples
of Bentham. As a Victorian bureaucrat, Chadwick worked
"with his insistent finger in every interventionist pie
from Poor Law, factory acts, and police to the century-
long battle over public responsibility for public health.
Therefore, it is not strange that scholars have located
7 the origins of the welfare state in the period 1832-54
,.6
David Roberts, Victorian Origins of the British VJelfare State (New Haven, 1960) , p. 30.
Brebner, "Laissez-Faire and State Intervention," p. 64; See also S. E. Finer, Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (London, 1952, reprinted 1970), pp. 129-35.
7 Roberts, "Bentham and Victorian Administrative
State," p. 194.
18
or argued that "in the middle quarters of the nineteenth
century, the collectivist system of the present day began
to take its shape."
Bentham's principle of utility was a consistent
theme in the antagonism directed against the medieval
aristocracy, the individualism to free the people from
prejudice and tradition, and the legislative collectivism
of the modern administrative state. Dicey's remark that
"around the time between 1860 and 1900, faith in laissez-
faire suffered an elipse; hence the principle of utility
became an argument in favor, not of individual freedom,
but of absolutism of state; state by collective sover-
9
eignty" can be understood according to this interpreta
tion. Beatrice Webb pointed out that there was a close
interrelationship between the Benthamites and latter-day
Fabians. Dicey made the same point, stating that
"English collectivists have inherited from their utili
tarian predecessors a legislative doctrine, a legislative
instrument, and a legislative tendency preeminently
suited for the carrying out of socialist experiments."
g
MacDonagh, "Revolution in Government," p. 15. 9 Dicey, Law and Public Opinion, p. 310.
Beatrice Webb, Our Partnership (New York, 19 48), p. 210; See also Harold Perkin, Th£ Origins of Modern English Society, 1780-1880 (London, 1969), pp. 324-25.
Dicey, Law and Public Opinion, p. 310.
19
Bentham's emphasis on speed and efficiency in the
building of a central administration has led to charges
of authoritarianism. One of his major critics in this
regard was Halevy. Halevy's chief point was to stress
the authoritarian element in Bentham's constitutional and
legal thought, arguing that "Bentham had never been a
liberal; always impatient of philanthrophic reforms, he
merely passed from a monarchic authoritarianism to a demo
cratic authoritarianism, without pausing at the interme
diary position, which is the position of Anglo-Saxon
12 liberalism." The phrase "democratic authoritarianism"
seems improper for an understanding of Bentham's rational
ism. Bentham's attachment to calculation and his pursuit
of scientism were beyond the scope of authoritarianism,
which relied on authority rather than on rationality for
its power source. Bentham was a political and legal
scientist who searched for the formulation of a collec
tive bureaucracy. Bentham was once regarded as one of
the founders of a philosophy which became known as liber
alism. Later socialists described it as "bourgeois
ideology." The confusion as to whether Bentham's ideas
were socialistic or liberal was caused by the fact that
both ideologies occupied the same ground of rationalism
and individual enlightenment.
1 2 Halevy, Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 375-76.
20
Bentham never ignored the importance of the public
education of the individual members of society. He actu
ally regarded education as an essential prerequisite of
building a constitutional state. His proposal to create
an education ministry in the central administration was
aimed at achieving the goal of public enlightenment.
When Bentham made this proposal, however, few
Englishmen believed in a national system of education.
The great majority argued that the state had no responsi
bility for the instruction of its individual members.
Some prominent figures disagreed, however. William
Blackstone, who defended the traditional English consti
tution in opposition to Bentham, expressed in 176 5 the
hope that all countries would turn their attention to
the enlightenment of the masses and, as a preliminary
measure, he insisted upon compulsory schooling. Adam
Smith in 1776 asserted boldly that the intellectual,
spiritual, and physical condition of the people was be
ginning rapidly to degenerate and that it would continue
to do so unless the state itself devised an adequate
means of protection. Smith's suggestion that a system
of compulsory, if not free, education be introduced for
the benefit of the ignorant was based on his firm belief
13 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws
of England (Oxford, 1765; reprinted in 1966) , I, 450.
21
14 in human progress by education. But their prophetic
cries were not accepted by their contemporaries. During
the Napoleonic wars, on the continent a crucial period
in the history of the nation state, Britain never seri-
15 ously considered a state role in education.
The major hindrance to the erection of a state
system of education was the fear that it would destroy
civil and religious liberty and the established order.
Conservative opinion on education was strongly supported
by most leaders of the Church of England. They believed
that it was safe and desirable for the government and
the Church to let the people remain in the state of
ignorance in which nature had originally placed them.
The Church of England claimed the sole responsibility
for the moral instruction of all the people. The Sunday
Schools, in which children were taught to read the Bible,
were an early attempt to spread religious instruction
among the poor. Elementary education in Britain was in
the hands of religious societies. There was no genuine
14 Adam Smith, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes
of the Wealth of Nations, ed. by Ernest Belfort Bax (2 vols., London, 1913), II, 301-305; H. C. Barnard, A Short History of English Education, 1760-1944 (London, 1947), pp. 53-54.
15 Hugh Pollard, Pioneers of Popular Education,
1760-1850 (London, 1956), p. 144; See also J. W. Adamson, English Education, 1789-1902 (Reprinted ed., Cambridge, 1964), pp. 96-121.
22
teaching, no conception of the processes of education.
The motive of those societies was "a mixture of pure
charity, a desire to relieve misery and ignorance, and
a fear of the possible dangers of an increasingly large 1 c
and illiterate urban population."
The British government had no administrative
power to meet social needs. The progress of industri
alism brought about the problem of social cohesion; in
creased social mobility, a marked increase in population,
unemployment, the absence of formal education, and the
increase in specialized occupations, skills, and knowledge
Actually, the growth of manufacturing was accompanied by
a decline in popular education even in Scotland, where
the educational system was in fact better than anywhere 17 in England. In 1796 William Pitt proposed to build
schools of industry in every parish, but nothing of the
kma was done.
The elder Robert Peel in 1802 produced legislation
1 6 Llewellyn Woodward, Age of Reform, 1815-1870
(2nd edition, Oxford, 1962), p. 477. For English education before the industrial revolution see W. H. G. Armytage, Four Hundred Years of English Education (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1970), pp. 1-66 and James Murphy, Church, State, and Schools in Britain, 1800-1970 (London, 1971), pp. 1-25.
17' . Elie Halevy, A History of the English People
in the Nineteenth Century (New York: 1949-52), I, 256. 18 Adamson, English Education, p. 20.
23
concerned with the education of the children of the work
ing classes. The Health and Morals of Apprentices Act
provided for the teaching of apprentices during the work-
19 ing day and at least one hour on Sunday. However, in
1806 an estimated 2,000,000 children in England and Wales
20 received no education of any kind. It was said in 1810
that 75 percent of the agricultural laborers were unable
to read and that one person in every seven was receiving
parish relief. Malthus proclaimed that pauperism could
be rooted out only if the poor classes were taught to
exercise moral control, that illiteracy could be elimi
nated if the state accepted the responsibility of in
structing all its citizens, and that the welfare of the
greatest percentage of the population could effectively
be secured if political economy was introduced into ele
mentary education. He lamented the state of education,
stating that "it is surely a great national disgrace that
the education of the lower classes in England should be
left entirely to a few Sunday Schools, supported by a
subscription from individuals, who can give to the course
19 Woodward, The Age of Reform, p. 11.
20 Patrick Colquhoun, A Treatise on Indigence;
Exhibiting a General View of the National Resources for Productive Labour; With Propositions for Ameliorating the Condition of the Poor, and Improving the Moral Habits and Increasing the Comforts of the Labouring People . . . (London, 1806), p. 142.
24
of instruction in them any kind of bias which they
21 please." This was the background of the Benthamite
movement for educational reform.
Compared to other reformers, the Benthamite in
terest in the establishment of a national education system
is best understood in the broad context of Bentham's pro
phetic idea of constructing a modern administrative state.
The writing of Bentham was not a philosophical justifica
tion of things as they were but a revolutionary demand
for the reconstruction of things as they ought to be.
What the Benthamites criticized when discussing education
was the system which had existed before the industriali
zation of Britain. This system had been operated for very
limited and inherently conservative ends. English educa
tion in its pre-industrial setting performed a homoge
nizing function only for the new entrants into the elite
group ordained and destined to govern and hold power.
Elementary education, if provided at all for the masses,
was promoted by the ruling classes for humanistic reasons,
and viewed mainly as a tool for sustaining social balance
22 and social responsibility. The educational system of
21 Robert Malthus, Essays on the Principles of
Population (London, 1817), III, '203-05. 22 Manuel Zymelman, "Labor, Education and Develop
ment," Education in National Development, ed. by Don Adams (London, 19 71), p. 99.
25
the modern state with its provisions for the education by
the central government, universal and compulsory educa
tion, emphasis on education in science and technology,
and the neutralization of religious influences was the
"ought to be" for Benthamites. The Benthamite principle
of education was to be found in modern educational systems
which attempt to provide vast social and cultural changes
and to extend the homogenizing function to the masses.
Bentham and his school had a wide definition of
education, meaning a total environmental influence.
While Bentham was active as an uncompromising advocate
of political utilitarianism, demanding that all govern
ments should be judged by the test of utility, James
Mill's interest in the philosophy of utilitarianism really
started when he was engaged in writing the article on edu
cation for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Mill regarded
education as much more than formal schooling. Because of
this he developed his concept of social and political
education, the education of society and the state. He
believed that a bad society and a bad government could
pervert the characters of its members by rewarding bad
instead of good qualities. This was why the Benthamites
emphasized the educational aspect of constitutional
23 changes and parliamentary reform.
23 W. H. Burston, James Mill on Philosophy and
Education (London, 1973), pp. 198-227.
26
The Benthamite belief that evil was social rather
than individual, a disease and corruption of the body
politic and not a fall of the single soul, was fundamental
to the development of the idea of the modern administra
tive state. James Mill envisaged educational change as
an essential aspect of a wider social transformation. He
saw that the aim of conventional education, which was
basically to train an elite to rule the ignorant masses,
was no longer valid. He agreed with Bentham that educa
tion should be broadened to include the masses on the
assumption that the most neglected classes must become
the principal object of care. Mill asserted that "the
proper education of this portion of the people is there
fore of the greatest possible importance to the well-
24 being of the state." The task of educating the masses
necessarily fell to the state. "The less parents are
able to discharge this duty, the more necessary it is for
25 government to fulfill it."
The Benthamite principle of education was that
the individual character can by education be molded to
any desired pattern. It represented the environmental
theory of educational psychology: all human character is
24 James Mill, "Edinburgh Review," Westminster
Review, I (January 1824) , 206ff. ^^Bentham, Works, I, "Principles of Penal Law,"
570.
27
formed by circumstances through the universal principle
of association. Consequently, it is unlimitedly possible
to improve the moral and intellectual condition of mankind
2 6
by education. In other words, education properly con
ducted was capable of almost anything, and society had
therefore in its own hands the power of creating the
social material to make possible its ideal of social
justice. The significance of the mechanistic conception
of human psychology held by the Benthamites was that it
introduced the critical, unimaginative, and unemotional
outlook on life to their contemporaries.
As educationists the Benthamite reformers greatly
worried about the social disintegration, allegedly caused
by aristocratic pride, which was found in all ranks of
London society. They observed that "this spirit {aristo
cratic pride] not only separates gentlemen from trademen 27
but the latter have also their classes & divisions."
James Mill himself, according to his son, considered
vanity or self-conceit as the enemy of all students.
"He kept me, with extense vigilance, out of the way of 2 8
hearing myself praised."
2 6 John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (London, 1873),
p. 75. 27 Samuel Hanson to Francis Place, [n.d.]. Place
Papers, British Museum, Add. MSS, 35144, f. 392. 2 8 J. S. Mill, Autobiography, p. 23.
28
The study of the problems of public education
which Bentham had earlier made in collaboration with
James Mill confirmed their anti-clericalism. As a
theorist of social reform, Bentham rejected the current
religion for moral rather than for metaphysical reasons.
"What is called religion, occupies a principal place"
29
among the causes of most human evils. By the begin
ning of the nineteenth century society had become much
more secular in outlook. The industrial revolution and
the requirements of commerce and science were creating a
need for social studies far beyond the purview of the
clergy. The Benthamites believed that insignificant dif
ferences in religious belief led to disaffection and civil
strife. James Mill condemned the alliance of the Church
of England and the aristocracy as survivals of medie-, . 30 valism.
Because Benthamites believed that controversies
over religious belief were endless and absurd, their
basic attitude toward religion was "neither to attack, 31
nor to affect religion, but to ignore it." In practice
29 Bentham, Works, I, "A Fragment on Government,"
81. 30 Burston, James Mill, p. 58.
31 Alfred William Benn, The History of English
Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 19 06), I, 297.
29
they found it expedient not to provoke any more hostility
than was absolutely unavoidable. However, Bentham could
not refrain from a series of criticisms of religious be
lief. He estimated the value of religion from the point
of view of utility, as distinct from the point of view
of truth, since he was convinced that nothing could be
known concerning the origins of things. The Benthamites
regarded religion as not simply a mental delusion but as
a great moral evil, because Christian morality continued
to stress blind tradition under the name of a religious
creed.
To the Benthamites science and technology were
integral parts of education. The emphasis on science and
technology was designed to meet the requirements of the
contemporary society. Bentham accepted the vocational
principle of education, not in the sense of a narrow
specialized training, but by advocating a general survey
and understanding of science and technology as the basis
for a future choice of occupation. Classical teaching
was suppressed, and scientific teaching was justified by
32 its utility.
The principle of state interference in popular
education was expressed to the public when Samuel
Whitbread introduced his Parochial Schools Bill in the
•^^Bentham, Works, VIII, "Chrestomathia," 18, 24.
30
House of Commons in 1807, the first attempt to realize
the Benthamite idea of national education. The prin
ciples of the bill were the nationalization of education
by means of administrative aid from the central govern
ment to local parish schools and tlie freeing of popular
education from church influence. Benthamite ideas were
thus brought into prominence, and the resulting educa
tional controversies would endure for over a century.
CHAPTER III
THE BENTHAMITES AND THE BEGINNING
OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM
Systematic attempts by the Benthamites to reform
the educational system of England began in the first
two decades of the nineteenth century. There were three
principal projects: the Whitbread bill of 1807, the
West London Lancastrian Association, and the Chrestomathic
School plan of 1813, Because of the unfavorable con
ditions produced by the Napoleonic Wars and the political
repression which followed, little in the way of positive
achievement resulted from these attempts. The period
prior to 1820 did, however, witness the spread of
Bentham's ideas on education and the emergence of a
definite Benthamite reform group which would play an
important role in educational reform in the 1820s.
The year 180 8 was a memorable one for the
Benthamite reformers. Bentham and James Mill met each
other that year and began to gather their followers to
form the Benthamite group as advocates for social and
legal reform. Some months earlier, in August 1807, the
English Parliament had considered Whitbread's Parochial
31
32
Schools Bill, which expressed for the first time in
Parliament the belief in establishing a national system
of education. Bentham and Mill never ceased to advocate
such reform as part of the broad perspective of social
and administrative reform. At the same time, the non-
sectarian principle of public education led them also to
join and support the effort for educational improvements
at the private level. Finally, the Benthamites attempted
to set up their own educational institutions, such as
the West London Lancastrian Association for elementary
schools and the Chrestomathic School for secondary educa
tion, in order to put their utilitarian educational views
into practice.
Sir Samuel Whitbread, one of the leading radicals
in the House of Commons, had established himself by 1791
as "an earnest opponent of everything savouring of oppres
sion and abuse." He thought that the time was ripe to
establish a national system of education, and he believed
that the introduction of the cheap monitorial method of
Sir Samuel Whitbread was born into a nonconformist family. He married the eldest daughter of Sir Charles (afterward first earl) Grey. He was elected in 1790 to represent Bedford as a Whig, but his activities in Parliament were completely independent because of his private fortune. See Dictionary of National Biography, XXI, 24-28. Recently, Roger Fulford wrote the first biography of Whitbread, based on letters and documents discovered by the author. Roger Fulford, Samuel Whitbread, 1764-1815: A Study in Opposition (London, 1967).
33
teaching, developed in Joseph Lancaster's school, could
provide a model for the national system. He introduced
a bill providing for the free education of the children
of the poor on February 19, 1807. He proposed a general
system of national education by the establishment of
parish schools. Whitbread's great innovation was the
concept of a national system of education incorporated
within the structure of parish relief. The motivation
behind the bill was the belief that crime decreased
2 with education,
Whitbread's bill proposed that the poor children
of each parish receive two years education sometime
between the ages of seven and fourteen. It contained
a compulsory clause, requiring the establishment of at
least one school in every parish, which was the founda
tion of all local government. The occupiers of lands
and houses in the parish were to be rated to provide
the funds for the children's education, which was to be
superintended by the parson and parish officers. The
bill further empowered the magistrates of the parishes
to purchase or hire any buildings or lands for schools.
The appointment of schoolmasters was also the responsi
bility of magistrates. The administration of the act
was placed in the hands of magistrates, who had the
2 Fulford, Samuel Whitbread, p. 17 8.
34
power to suspend the law whenever and wherever additional
or new schools were not necessary. Sir Samuel Romilly,
an eminent disciple of Bentham and a friend of Whitbread,
moved to establish a committee to consider the bill at
length.
The opposition to Whitbread's bill came largely
from the Tories. They pointed out the already enormous
governmental expenditure resulting from the war with
Napoleonic France. Actually, however, their arguments
were based primarily on their religious belief. No
one, they argued, would subscribe to the Sunday Schools
if the parish schools were established. The principle
of the bill was seen as pregnant with more mischief than
advantage. Davies Giddy, a Tory, argued in the debate:
1 Hansard, IX (July 13, 1807), 798-806. Romilly's enthusiasm for the French Revolution was sobered by the influence of Bentham. During a tour on the continent in 1781 Romilly laid the basis of a life-long friendship with Genevan preacher and publicist Etienne Dumont, the friend of Mirabeau and afterwards editor of Bentham's works. He wrote in 1784 "A Fragment on the Constitutional Power and Duty of Juries upon Trials for Libels," which was much admited by Bentham and Lord Lansdowne. Romilly agreed with every word of Bentham's Church of Englandism. Romilly "contributed materially to the education of the Whigs when he compelled them to take account of Bentham's work in jurisprudence." See H. W. C. Davies, The Age of Grey and Peel (New York, 1929; reprint ed., 1974), p. 131. Their friendship lasted until 1818 when Romilly committed suicide after his wife's death. See Samuel Romilly, Memoirs, ed. by his sons (3 vols.; London, 1840) and Bentham, Works, X, 186, 249-94, 404-34.
35
For, however specious in theory the project might be, of giving education to the labouring classes of the poor, it would, in effect, be found to be prejudicial to their morals and happiness; it would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture, and other labourous employments . . . ; instead of teaching them subordination, it would render them factitious and refractory, as was evident in the manufacturing counties; it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books, and publications against Christianity; it would render them insolent to their superiors . . . .
The bill was circulated in the counties for the
consideration of the magistrates. The leaders in local
government failed to understand the significance of the
bill sent to them for study. The majority of the local
magistrates were also decidedly opposed to the bill.
Most of them believed that the existing poor laws and the
public charitable schools were fully adequate to ameliorate
the condition of the poor. In London alone eighteen peti
tions were presented to the House of Comraons in opposition
to the bill. However, Commons was generally friendly to
the bill and passed it finally on August 6, 1807, although
the compulsory clause was lost.
In the Lords, Lord Holland, an enlightened Whig
^1 Hansard, IX (July 13, 1807), 798,
The secondary literature dealing extensively with Whitbread's bill is scarce. See H. C. Barnard, A Short History of English Education (London, 1947), pp. 76-77; J. W. Adamson, English Education, 1789-1902 (Cambridge, 196 4) , chapter I; and Davies, Grey and Peel, pp. 126-7, 137.
36
of "universal toleration and urbanity," moved the
second reading of the Parochial Schools Bill on August
11, 1807. The bill proposed that responsibility for
the establishment of such schools be given to the majority
of the parishioners, without discrimination of rank or
property in the parish. The schools were merely to teach
such basics as spelling, reading, writing, and arithmetic, 7
subjects useful for life. Lord Stanhope, a radical in
the Lords, strongly supported the bill, and he attacked
the claim of the church to control all education. He
criticized the "abominable principle, that no part of
the population of this country ought to receive education g
unless in the tenets of the Established Church." The
bill was supported by the liberal and radical members
who recognized the theoretical impropriety of religious
interference with national education. They also opposed
on practical grounds the monopoly of education by certain
religious institutions. These peers represented the
growing number of men who supported the new political
idea that the state rather than the church must bear the
r
Dictionary of National Biography, VII, 56 7. 7 Charles Stanhope, third earl of Stanhope, was
educated at Utrecht and Geneva. He acquired a love for mathematics and for democratic principles. He V7as earnest for education on a comprehensive basis. See Dictionary of National Biography, XVIII, 890.
^1 Hansard, IX (August 11, 1807), 1177.
37
responsibility for the universal education of the people.
The immediate opposition in the Lords was led
by the archbishop of Canterbury, who complained that
"the provisions of the bill left little or no control
to the minister in his parish" and that the bill "would
subvert the first principles of education in this country."
Education "should be under the control and auspices of 9
the establishment." The Lords agreed that education for
the lower orders of the community might be desirable.
But, they opposed the bill because it did not place
instruction upon a more religious footing. The opponents
to the bill flatly disagreed with the democratic principle
of leaving the establishment of such schools to the
discretion of the majority of parishioners. Although
he was a churchman, Whitbread was one of those who wished
to see the influence of the clergy limited to "the pews
and pulpits of the parish church on Sunday."
Although passing the House of Commons, the
Parochial Schools Bill failed in the House of Lords on
the motion of the future Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool.
Whitbread's speech, which contrasted the inadequacy of
education in England with the far better system pre
vailing in Scotland, stirred the opposition of the
^Ibid.
"'" Fulford, Samuel Whitbread, p. 258.
38
archbishop of Canterbury. Samuel Romilly recalled later
that the bill "met the prejudices of men who thought it
expedient to keep the people in a state of ignorance,
and who were alarmed lest false notions in politics and
religion be spread throughout the country."
Though a herald of the future, the Parochial
Schools Bill proved itself fundamentally too radical to
be accepted by the Anglican Church, which felt its
established interest in education threatened. Those
who supported Whitbread's bill realized that English soci
ety was not yet ready for any national system of educa
tion requiring assistance from the central government.
The significance of the bill was that it was the first
attempt by Parliament to establish a system of national
education by means of state aid. Although the bill was
hurriedly prepared and showed want of exact knowledge
on the part of its author, it contained much that was
needed for the poor and exhibited considerable political
foresight. In consequence of the Whitbread bill of 1807,
the speaker of the House of Commons requested an investi
gation of charitable institutions. John Rickman prepared
an abstract of the total amount of charitable donations
for the maintenance of schools in England and Wales, The
Romilly, Memoirs, II, 20 7,
39
inquiry displayed the insufficiency and abuse of the
donated funds, and it showed the need for the further
investigation of the state of education by the "Select
Committee on the Education of the Lower Orders," which 1 p
was created in 1816 by Brougham's proposal.
Whitbread's sincere and enlightened interest in
public education was not confined to his activities in
Parliament. He also participated in private attempts to
promote a broader educational opportunity. He became
a powerful and enthusiastic supporter of Joseph Lancaster's
schools, which were the consequent focus of Benthamite
efforts.
In 180 8 Joseph Lancaster and some of his friends
organized themselves into a committee, which later
13 evolved into the Royal Lancastrian Institution. The
object of the institution was the propagation of the
non-sectarian system of education that Lancaster had
developed in his school on Borough Road, London. Lan
caster claimed to apply new educational principles in
12 "Report from Select Committee on the Education
of Lower Orders in the Metropolis (1816)," Parliar.-antary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1968), Education and Poorer Classes, I, 169-170.
13 On Lancaster's elementary education see S. J.
Curtis, History of Education in Great Britain (6th ed.; London, 1965), chapter VI; W. H. G. Armytage, Four Hundred Years of English Education (2nd ed.; Cambridge, 1970), pp. 90-93; and D. Salmon, ed., Lancaster's Improvements and Bell's Experiments (Cambridge, 1932).
40
his school. Pedagogically, the plan of Lancaster was
the monitorial system, a system of instruction that, by
the simple device of having the children teach one another,
seemed to maximize the activity of the pupils, to be
automatic and cheap, and to be capable of multiplying
itself without end. At a time when there was a scarcity
of qualified schoolmasters , Lancaster provided a solution
to the problem of ending, cheaply and quickly, the
illiteracy of the masses. Thanks to royal support, the
subscriptions to his school came not only from members
of the royal family but also from members of both houses
of Parliament--such men as the duke of Bedford, Lord
Somerville, the duke of Sussex, Whitbread, Brougham, and
Romilly, They extricated Lancaster from his financial em
barrassments and enabled him to establish his schools on
14 a firmer foundation as the Royal Lancastrian Institution.
By 1811 the Royal Lancastrian Institution was
seen by the Anglican Church as a threat. The Institution
consisted of religious dissenters, mainly Quakers, who
in religious training would have nothing but the Bible
and who rejected the teaching of the catechism of the
Established Church in the curriculum of their elementary
schools. The rapid development of education under the
Allen to Brougham, August 19, 1812, Brougham Collection, University of London, fol. 10951,
41
aegis of the nonconformist Lancaster soon alarmed the
Church, The Church of England felt itself threatened
also by Lancaster's assertion that education ought to
be a national concern. In 1811, therefore, the Established
Church founded the National Society, which was to promote
the education of the poor in the principles of the Church,
teaching the liturgy and catechism of the Church of
England. The National Society was more interested in
religious instruction than in general education, however,
and it was narrowly zealous in its religious principles
and ready to oppose aid by the state. Above all, at that
time the Church of England's instruction consisted chiefly,
if not solely, in requiring students to commit to memory
catechism and formularies which were neither explained
15 nor understood. The textbooks were supplied by the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. The Church of
England schools were not allowed to use books other than
from the above society. The National Society schools
were open to all children from all religious sects, but
1 6 the teachers had to be members of the Church of England.
All children in the schools were required to attend church
1 c
James Kay-Shuttleworth, Recent measures for the Promotion of Education in England (London, 1839), p. 9.
•^^"Minutes of Evidence" (June 12, 1834), Report from Select Committee on the State of Education, Parliamentary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1970), Education and Poorer Classes, VI, 16-23.
42
on Sundays, and the schools were in every case under the
17 superintendence of the clergyman of the parish.
Most of those who played an active role in
administering the Royal Lancastrian Institution were
religious dissenters, mainly Quakers, and included such
men as Joseph Fox, Joseph Foster, William Carston, Thomas
18 Sturge, and William Allen. Side by side with them were
found the friends of Bentham: James Mill, Francis Place,
Henry Brougham, and Samuel Romilly. Except for Place,
they were all on the financial committee, along with
Samuel Whitbread, who was an extremely generous benefactor
19
to the institution. In the association of the Bentha
mites with the Royal Lancastrian Institution William
Allen played an eminent role. He was a Quaker educationist
who believed that "Lord Bacon and Sir Isaac Newton have
done more for the advancement of real knowledge than all 20 their predecessors." He was an associate of Robert
Owen and the founder of the Philanthropist, a quarterly
journal started in 1811 in which educational improvement
17 K a y - S h u t t l e w o r t h , Recent Measures , p , 5 1 .
1 g
William Allen, Life of William Allen with Selections from His Correspondence (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1847), I, 72.
Alexander Bain, James Mill: A Biography (London, 1882), p. 82.
^^Allen, Life of William Allen, p. 89.
43
was one of the many themes of social reform discussed.
It was Allen who induced Bentham to invest in Owen's
mills at New Lanark and who interested Bentham and James
Mill in the Lancastrian school movement.
Bentham invited Allen to his residence, the Queen's
Square Place, Westminster, in late 1810, and they
probably discussed then their common interests in the
various social problems of the times. Bentham promised
to give his support to Allen's project of the Philan
thropist and introduced Allen to James Mill. In the course
of the conversation, Allen was deeply impressed by Mill's
willingness to help in promoting his journal. In a
letter to Brougham, Allen wrote, "indeed his heart seems
warm in the cause of mankind and if I form an opinion
upon so short an acquaintance, he seems possessed of no
ordinary powers . . . .
Mill also promised to contribute articles for the
Philanthropist; he was studying the poor laws and looking
for a means of publishing the result of his work. Three
months later. Mill wrote at length to Allen expressing
his social philosophy, as a Benthamite and a political
economist. He explained the inseparable relationship
and mutual influences between the lower orders of society
•'•Allen to Brougham, October 2, 1810, Brougham Collection, fol. 10950; Bain, James Mill, pp. 81-82.
44
and the higher not in terms of charity or benevolence of
the latter to the former but on the socio-economic inter
dependence within society. That was why "the higher
22 orders should educate the lower." At Mill's request,
the letter was sent to Brougham, who had recently entered
Parliament and who had also expressed great interest in
Allen's journal. Mill wished to have Brougham under his
influence, believing him to be a highly useful young
radical with a political future. In the summer of 1812,
Mill was in the middle of his work on the poor laws for
the Philanthropist. Allen helped him to get information
as to the present amount of pauperism, the number who
received parochial relief, and the amount of the poor-law
23 rate in different parts of England and Wales. Mill
became a chief contributor to the journal, and his
friendly relations with Allen were undistrubed even
oy the difference of their religious faiths.
In his earlier years, Bentham had been associated
with the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor,
a charitable organization sponsored by the Church of
England. But the obstinacy of the Established Church on
matters of religious education turned Bentham against
22 James Mill to Allen, January 17, 1811, Brougham
Collection, fol. 10775. 23 Allen to Brougham, August 29, 1812, Brougham
Collection, fol. 10951.
45
the establishment. The monopolistic attitude of the
Church of England on education produced Bentham's bitter
work on "Church of Englandism" and his large educational
24 treatise, Chrestomathia, James Mill, being indignant
at the establishment of the National Society, set forth
his view of non-sectarianism in religious education in
an article in the Philanthropist in 1812. At this time,
probably late in 1811, Mill became acquainted with Francis
Place, the self-educated radical tailor of Charing Cross
who strongly desired to promote education among the poor.
Mill usually called on Place on his way to Bentham's
25 Queen's Square Place, spending an hour or so with him.
The mutual understanding and common interest in social
reform between Mill and Place speedily ripened into
friendship. Place became a confidant of James Mill, and
he managed Mill's financial affairs during his long
2 6 absence from London between 1814 to 1818.
Place became a devoted Benthamite advocate for
2 4 John R. Poynter, Society and Pauperism; English
Ideas on Poor Relief, 1795-1834 (London, 1969), p. 199. ^^"History of West London Lancastrian Association,"
Place Papers, British Museum, Add. MSS. 27823, fols. 83-87. Three books on the life of Francis Place are available: Graham Wallas, The Life of Francis Place (London, 1925), Francis Place, The Autobiography of Francis Place, ed. by Mary Thale (Cambridge, 1972), and John G. Ervine, "Francis Place," Fabian Tracts, No. 165 (London, 1912), pp. 88-114.
26 Bain, James Mill, p. 79.
46
non-sectarian education. Mill's pamphlet, School for
All in Preference to Schools for Churchmen Only, converted
Place to the belief that "the way to teach all was to
27 teach no religious doctrine." His Benthamite confession
continues, "the question whether the people should be
educated, is the same with the question whether they
should be happy or miserable . . . . The wretched igno
rance of a large portion of the population is the fruit-
2 8 ful parent of crime."
Enthusiastically Place proposed that Mill launch
a new Lancastrian school in West London on the principle
or pure non-sectarianism. He had read most of the publi
cations related to the different modes of teaching and
administering schools, becoming convinced that the mode
of teaching in his school should follow the effective
Lancastrian system with no religious teaching. He believed
that no particular doctrine could be made agreeable to
all, and, because the principle was to teach all, he
saw very clearly that spiritual doctrine should be left
to "those who were paid to teach it or to the parents of
the children." He was reasonably hopeful that schools
2 7 • • "History of West London Lancastrian Association,
Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27823, fol. 84.
^^Ibid., fol. 88.
^^Ibid., fol. 84.
47
without religious doctrine would calm the disputes over
the religious problems in elementary education,
A meeting for obtaining public support for the
West London Lancastrian Association was held on August 2,
1813, Funds for the schools were to be raised by annual
subscriptions of 5s for membership in the association.
It was the promoters' intention to procure enough money
to establish schools "sufficiently large and sufficiently
numerous to admit the whole of the poorer children who
reside West of Temple Bar," The first school was to be
established in a district bounded on the north by the
New Road, from Paddington to Battle-Bridge. Members of
the committee included all religious sects: infidels,
unitarians, methodists, presbyterians, baptists. Church
men, and Roman Catholics. By March 1814 the project
seemed to be so successful that Brougham wrote Place
recommending one of his acquaintances as the secretary
of the association. In the summer of 1814, however, an
unexpected difficulty occurred within the school
committee--the discord between Place and Joseph Fox.
Mill and Place had introduced Fox, a Quaker
active in the Royal Lancastrian Institution, to the new
London association. They thought that Fox's experience
would help to promote their own project. Place considered
^°Ibid., fol, 88,
48
him "the preserver of Lancaster schools and judicious
31 supporter of the Lancastrian system," The real source
of dispute between the Benthamites and Joseph Fox,
however, was their difference in religious belief. Fox's
main interest seemed to be the expansion of Quaker sec
tarianism, which Place condemned as "ignorant superstition,"
and accused him of an "evil intention of making the insti-
32 tution his own,"
That same year, 1814, the Royal Lancastrian Insti
tution changed its name to the British and Foreign School
Society, reorganizing itself to compete with the National
Society established by the Church of England. In its
reorganization, the British and Foreign School Society
decided to absorb the West London Lancastrian Association,
which was plagued by the dispute between Place and Fox.
"Calling itself the parent institution," the British and
Foreign School Society called upon the West London Lan
castrian Association "to adopt the principles of that
33 institution" and to become "an auxiliary society,"
Place could not accept the application, and he resigned
from the school committee.
In a letter replying to Place's explanatory
- • Ibid. , fol. 85.
-^^Ibid. , fols. 82, 88.
-^^Ibid., fol. 117.
49
report on what had happened. Mill stated, "In fact the
people whom that work requires seem as yet to exist in
a very small number. A reform of education, and a wider
diffusion of its benefits, must precede . . . . So that
a period (possibly a long one) of hard labour, little
benefit, is set before us. But this shall not discourage
34 me," Yet Mill wished the school committee to work
under the leadership of Fox, who was likely to undertake
"the heaviest part of the work now that you [Place]
35 have withdrawn," The West London Lancastrian Association was dissolved, and the school committee was annexed
36 to the British and Foreign School Society,
The difficulties which finally aborted the first
educational plan of the Benthamites were twofold. The
first and principal one was the want of active public
support. The second difficulty was the corresponding
want of necessary funds for the establishment and support
of the school plan. The Benthamites had expressed the
liberal and universal principles of providing "school
for all" and affording education in "reading, writing,
arithmetic, and good morals" to children of every
religious denomination without distinction. They had
^^Mill to Place, July 30, 1814, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 37949, fol. 18.
^^Ibid., fol. 19.
Adamson, English Education, p. 25.
50
expected therefore to secure the eager cooperation of
people of all religions. This expectation had not been
realized.
Along with his efforts to promote the West London
Lancastrian Association for elementary education. Place
had in mind the possibility of establishing a "Superior
Lancastrian School" in London, which would provide an
example of the application of the methods of the monitorial
system to secondary education. In London the actual
number of elementary schools was far greater than that of
secondary schools. In fact, in establishing elementary
schools on a non-sectarian basis, the Benthamites were
in the position of competition with the already existing
schools supported by the Anglican Church and by the reli
gious dissenters. In the fall of 1813 Place discussed
the idea with Mill. Mill heartily concurred in it and
agreed to assist in procuring funds. Mill in turn discussed
it with Bentham, who was much pleased with the proposal
and readily joined the project. Encouraged by his mentors.
Place decided to devote himself to the cause by inducing
as many people as possible to aid their project. Place
discussed the future plan with William Allen, who "was
willing to do something," and with Henry Brougham, who was
"one of the few who sees the whole extent of what it may
51
lead to."^*^
On February 24, 1814, after a committee meeting
of the West London Lancastrian Association, some of the
members formed themselves into a new association for the
new school, James Mill, Henry Brougham, and William
38 Allen were recommended as trustees, Bentham wrote
Place in support of the plan and took three shares.
Place rejoiced: "This confirmation of my opinions as
they regard the school is of great importance coming
from such a man. His interference will provide the best
39 efforts," Bentham decided to write a program for the
new school. He devised a new scheme of education for
the middle and the poorer classes, which comprised moral
training, intellectual discipline, and the learning of
a trade. He anonymously published his educational plan
under the title Chrestomathia in the summer of 1815,
and in 1817 he republished it with a new title page on
u- u X.- ^ 4 0
which his name appeared, Bentham's plan took into account the increase in
^^"The History of Chrestomathic School," Place Papers, Add. MSS, 27823, fols. 146-47.
^^Ibid,, fol. 148.
^^Place to Allen, March 3, 1814, Place Papers, Add, MSS, 27823, fol, 149,
^^Bentham, Works, VIII, "Chrestomathia: being a Collection of Papers, explanatory of the Design of , . the Chrestomathic Day School, etc.," passim.
52
the population of England, There were large numbers of
children and untutored adults, particularly in the cities,
who needed an education. As yet, however, there was
an extreme shortage of teachers. Bentham, who was well
aware of this situation, invented a particular type of
school building. The structure of the school was to be
41
designed on the Panopticon model, with one school
master for six hundred pupils. This, he said, was
"understood to be generally regarded as the greatest
number, that in one and the same school room, can be
taught under the constant inspection of one and the same
,,42 master.
In order to reduce costs, the school was to be
a non-boarding school. Place wrote to Allen:
It is notorious that independent of the inconveniences which attend Boarding Schools they are too espensive for the smaller trademen, a great majority of clerks in office and mercantile clerks, and of genteel persons where incomes are small. All such persons may send their children to such schools as that now proposed.4 3
By virtue of being non-residential, the school was also
free from the embarrassing obligation of providing
On this see Chapter II: "The Haunted House of Jeremy Bentham" by Gertrude Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds: A Study of Intellectuals in Crisis and of Ideologies in Transition (New York, 1952).
"^^Bentham, Works, VIII, "Chrestomathia," 73.
"^^Place to Allen, March 7, 1814, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27823, fol. 152,
53
religious teaching. It was to attend to useful, and not
merely to ornamental, instruction. It was to be launched
by a body of shareholders in a joint-stock company, but
"it was not in any respect a mercenary scheme, but simply
an attempt to do good on a large scale, and in the very
44 best manner." It was to be cheap and, eventually,
self-supporting.
Although Bentham's school plan had no sectarian
doctrine except for a universal principle of utility, it
could not make an appeal to the general public. Thus,
the first Benthamite effort for an educational institu
tion being essentially useful to a very large portion of
the people failed.
The Benthamites needed the financial and moral
support of the upper class if their second plan for
popular education was to be successful. Place was intro-
45 duced to Joseph Hume, a radical member of the House of
Commons, by Joseph Fox, Hume, who "had not much
44 "The History of Chrestomathic School," Place
Papers, Add, MSS, 27823, fol, 125. 45 Hume was an active supporter of liberal policy
in trade and manufacture. He became a leader of the radical party for thirty years after his return from East India where he had accumulated great wealth. His association with the Benthamites contributed much for their educational projects not only in financial aid but also in getting the support from the Whig members in Parliament. See Dictionary of National Biography, X, 230-31,
54
independent resources in the way of political knowledge,"
frequently discussed with James Mill his ideas and inten-
46 tions on public matters. On discussing the possibility
of getting aristocratic support for the Chrestomathic
School, Hume was very hopeful that it would meet with A '^
countenance and support from the aristocracy.
There were, however, objections among the mem
bers of the upper classes to the scientific education in
which the Benthamites had so great an interest. The
scheme of the Chrestomathic school included the three
Rs, history, geography, drawing, mathematics, natural
history, mechanics, magnetism and electricity, geology,
physiology, technology or arts, and manufacture. In
refusing his support to the new plan of education, one
of the governing class told Hume that: I must observe that I think the plan objectionable in as much as the low terms of admission will throw open to the lower classes of society an establishment which makes provision for the extension of science beyond which is necessary or expedient for the purposes of ordinary life.48
Hume also wrote a letter asking for support from the
marquess of Lansdowne, a Whig sympathetic to the movement
Bain, James Mill, p- 77.
" " "The History of Chrestomathic School," Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27823, fol. 126.
48 Sir James Langham to Hume, April 19, 1816, Ben
tham Collection, University of London, Box 165, fol. 14.
55
for general education. But Lansdowne declined the
proposal, since he was "so much attached , , , to our
existing public schools . . . that I should certainly
see with reluctance the establishment of anything that
could be considered as a rival foundation." He wanted
to see that "spirit of the old institutions be preserved
49 with an improved method of teaching." Place criticized
Lansdowne as betraying his conservatism as a Whig aristo
crat. "True to his order he would confine even the
smallest amount of useful knowledge taught in the public
schools to the aristocracy and would have the rest of the
50 community kept in profound ignorance,"
Nevertheless, great exertions were made to induce
persons of prominence to take shares, David Ricardo
promised his assistance with a subscription for the
51 52
school. Mill wrote Brougham to get his support.
The duke of Kent bought five shares in the Chrestomathic
School. He fully supported the plan, writing to Joseph
Hume that "to the Duke of Bedford, the marquess of Lans
downe, and to Lord Derby you have my full sanction to
49 Lansdowne to Hume, April 20, 1814, Place Papers,
Add. MSS, 27823, fol, 127, ^^"The History of Chrestomathic School," Place
Papers, Add, MSS. 27823, fol. 127.
5 1 Ricardo to Bentham and Mill, Bentham Collection,
July 15, 1814, Box 165, fol. 5. 52 James Mill to Brougham, July 6, 1815, Brougham
Collection, fol. 10758.
56
write using my name respecting them to join us , . , , I
particularly wish you would call on Lord Erskine who is
your neighbour from me, and put it into his hands, for he
has long expressed a wish for the attempt being made to
apply the mechanical process of Lancaster to the higher
53
branches of education," In 1817 Samuel Romilly contri
buted fifty pounds for the school, and in 1818 Francis
Burdett, a radical member in the House of Commons, wanted
to support the school by transferring his annual contri
bution from the British and Foreign School Society to the
Chrestomathic School, but legal difficulties prevented
54 this. After two years of effort, Bentham gathered m
the summer of 1816 a list of twenty prominent men to
serve as the managers of the school. James Mill, Samuel
Romilly, William Allen, Henry Brougham, Frnacis Place,
James Macintosh, David Ricardo, Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph
Hume, and Edward Wakefield were among those on the
I 1• ^ 5 5 manager's list.
Knowing that the new school plan had received a
favorable response from some members of the upper class.
• Duke of Kent to Joseph Hume, April 5, 1816, Bentham Collection, Box 165, fol. 12.
^^"The History of Chrestomathic School," Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27823, fol. 197.
^^Bentham Memorandum, May 6, 1816, Bentham Collection, Box 165, fol. 18.
57
Bentham published the proposal of the Chrestomathic
School in 1817 with his name on the title page. From
1817 to 1819 no progress was made, and, despite two
attempts, the managers never met. The prospect of the
successful establishment of the Chrestomathic School
remained rather bright, however, because of Bentham's
offer of his garden as the building site for the school.
This reduced the heavy financial burden on the public
share-holders. On May 11, 1820, the Chrestomathic School
building agreement was made between David Ricardo on the
one hand and Bentham and Place on the other. A piece
of ground on Bentham's Queen's Square Place was let to
Ricardo as trustee for the managers for the erection of
a school building. They estimated the expense of the
building, and Ricardo worked as treasurer for the
56 Managers. Bentham requested that a clause be added to
the agreement authorizing the lessee to give up the
57 building and its facilities to the lessor. The
commencement of the right of possession under the agree
ment was to be on June 24, 1821, with a duration of
twenty-one years.
Bentham's memorandum on the Chrestomathic School plan. May 11, 1820, Bentham Collection, Box 165, fol. 81.
57 Chrestomathic School Agreement, Bentham Collec
tion, Box 165, fol. 94.
58
Bentham was very careful to exclude the possible
use of the building for any religious activities, especially
58 on Sundays. Bentham inquired of Brougham about the
legal problem of leasing his house to the Chrestomathic
59 School. On May 27, 1820, Bentham presented the managers
with a new draft of the lease, to be substituted for the
first one which had been accepted by the managers. The
second lease differed in many respects from the first,
containing clauses which could not be accepted. The
managers pointed out the objectionable clauses and stated
the reasons why they could not be accepted. The main aim
of the new lease was to prevent the lessee from using
the school room or any other part of the school building
6 0 for any kind of religious service. The managers were
of the opinion that Bentham had taken from them the
power they needed over the building. They had, however,
no objection to allowing Bentham, individually, to use
the building for purposes not injurious to the school
61 on Sundays and at other convenient times.
^^Bentham to Managers, May 1820, Bentham Collection, Box 165, fol. 106.
^^Bentham to Brougham, May 16, 1820, Bentham Collection, Box 165, fol. 31.
^^Memorandum, June 3, 1820, Bentham Collection, Box 165, fol. 113.
Ibid.
59
This correspondence was continued until the end
of June, The two parties could not reach any compromise
6 2 about the right of using the building. Eventually,
the difficulties proved insuperable and the project was
abandoned. All the funds which had been collected were
returned, Ricardo expressed his feeling on the matter to
James Mill: "I should be exceedingly sorry if Mr,
Bentham should be disappointed in his wish of having the 6 "5
school in his garden." Bentham must have been disap
pointed. Three years later, however, he explained that
the Chrestomathic project had been abandoned with "utmost
satisfaction" in favor of Hazlewood School, which became
famous because of its innovative teaching methods and , 64 curriculum.
Place recalled years later the failure of the
plan:
The immediate cause of our failure was want of money . . . There were no sectarian doctrines to be inculcated . . . there were no party politics to be made . . . . There was no particular present eminence to be obtained. There was nothing but good to be done, almost solely for its own sake.
6 2 "The History of Chrestomathic School," Place
Papers, Add. MSS. 27823, fol. 197. ^^Ricardo to Mill, July 3, 1820, Bentham Collec
tion, Box 165, fol. 43. 64 Bentham to Bolivar for Miranda, June 6, 182 3,
Bentham Collection, Box 12, fol. 5.
60
and the number of persons willing to assist in so very novel a project being few, neither money nor assistance of any kind beyond a very small amount could be obtained."65
He again criticized the aristocracy;
The rich and (those) who affected aristocratic feelings scorned at the project, because it was claculated to educate 'the lower class' like gentlemen, to make them 'like us,' because it might either supercede Westminster, Eton, the Charter House, Harrow, and Rugby, or compel them to conform to the new system.6"
The Benthamite ideal of national education had
been tried first at the governmental level by Samuel
Whitbread in Parliament and at the private level by the
Benthamites themselves in the plans of the West London
Lancastrian Association and the Chrestomathic School.
All of these attempts, which occurred during the repressive
period of the early nineteenth century, failed. However,
the real outcome of these initial attempts up to 1820 was
that Bentham and Mill were able to spread their teachings
and to gather their followers and supporters into a
group of social reformers, who would devote themselves
to the cause of social improvement. Among them Henry
Brougham replaced Whitbread as their leader in Parliament,
and after 1816 he directed the attention of Parliament
to the state of education by establishing Select
"The History of Chrestomathic School," Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27823, fol. 124.
^^Ibid., fol. 126.
61
Committees, Francis Place had also become a devoted
Benthamite and an unyielding agitator for social reform,
playing an important role among the radicals in the 1820s
and after. At different levels. Brougham and Place
each played an essential role in the later establishment
of the London Mechanics' Institute and the University of
London.
CHAPTER IV
THE BENTHAMITES AND EDUCATION IN THE 1820s
Benthamism as an intellectual and social force
experienced a remarkable growth in the 1820s. The polit
ical and legal philosophy of Bentham and the moral and
educational ideas of Mill became fashionable among members
of various learned societies. Brougham, in proposing his
educational bill of 1820, became a leading spokesman in
Parliament for a national educational system based on
Benthamite principles. The establishment of the London
Mechanics' Institute in 1823 was an early, successful
application of the same principles and largely the work
of Francis Place. Finally, the most significant achieve
ment of the Benthamite reformers in the 1820s was the
establishment of London University. In these and other
plans for educational reform Bentham and his followers
were increasingly successful in obtaining the moral and
material support of the middle classes.
In practical efforts to improve popular education,
Henry Brougham played a leading role, although he was
never much of a theorist. When Brougham engaged in polit
ical theory in his later days, "he displayed little or no
62
63
originality in the formulation of theory." It was Bentham
and James Mill who provided Brougham with the vision and
ideas of national education. The social and intellectual
relationship between James Mill and Brougham originated
when they met early in 1808 at the house of a friend of
Bentham, John Whishaw, a well-known barrister in London.
In the same year, James Mill began to contribute articles
on various social problems to the Edinburgh Review, which
had been established by Brougham and his student friends,
the "academy of physics" at University of Edinburgh. It
is likely, however, that Brougham had earlier been
acquainted with Mill, because Mill was in his senior year
at Edinburgh when Brougham attended. Brougham easily
obtained the consent of Francis Jeffrey, one of the foun
ders of the Edinburgh Review, to honor Mill as an occasional
2 contributor to the journal. As a lawyer. Brougham came
to London and joined the "King of Clubs" in 1808, where he
met not only Mill but such other disciples of Bentham as
Sir Samuel Romilly and Sir James Mackintosh. During his
political apprenticeship. Brougham was greatly influenced
by Bentham. After being elected to the House of Commons
in 1810 for the first time. Brougham became interested in
the committee of the Royal Lancastrian Institution. By
"TSIew, Life of Henry Brougham, p. 153.
2 Bain, James Mill, p. 75.
64
1811 Brougham had established a strong personal relation
ship with Bentham through James Mill, and the impression
Bentham made on Brougham's mind forced him to read a great 3
deal of what Bentham had written. In addition, James
Mill inspired Brougham in the areas of education and law 4
reform. Mill concluded that Brougham, although not a
doctrinaire Benthamite, was a useful ally, and their per-5
sonal relationship was close and uninterrupted.
Brougham's interest in educational reform was
aroused because of his friendship with James Mill and his
aid to the Royal Lancastrian Institution. Brougham's ex
clusion from Parliament in 1812 brought him into a closer
association with the Benthamites, with whom he was already
working in connection with education. In 1813 Brougham was
recommended as Joseph Lancaster's successor as president
of the Royal Lancastrian Institution. One of the chief
tenets shared by Brougham and the Benthamites in the Royal
Lancastrian Institution was the belief that educational
reform was of greater immediate importance than constitu-
tional changes or parliamentary reform. Brougham's career
" Bentham, Works, X, 471-72; New, Life of Henry Brougham, p. 153.
4 J. S. Mill, Autobiography, p. 62. 5 Bain, James Mill, p. 75.
G. T. Garratt, Lord Brougham (London, 1935), p-49.
65
as a politician started under the strong influence of
Bentham and his school. He never mentioned the utili
tarians, however, in his letters, in his public speeches,
or later in his books, perhaps because of his personal
. . . . 7 and political ambition.
Because of Brougham's collaboration with the
Benthamites in the area of the educational improvement of
the lower classes, upon his return to Parliament in 1815
his first attempt to attract the attention of his colleagues
was to move the appointment of a "Select Committee to in
quire into the State of the Education of the Lower Orders
of the People in London, Westminster, and Southwark."
Brougham pointed out the insufficiency of the efforts of
private educational institutions, such as the National
Society and the British and Foreign School Society, in
ending illiteracy among the lower classes in the populous
urban areas, and he asked that the committee consider what
funds were applicable to the education of the poor. In
1816, about 3,000 children were educated by the National
Society and about 2,000 by the British and Foreign School
Society.^ He estimated that about 100,000 children in
See New, Life of Henry Brougham, p. 177. On one occasion in 1814 Brougham dishonestly misled the electors of Westminster into thinking of him as an advocate of annual parliaments.
^1 Hansard, XXXIV (May 21, 1816), 635.
66
London received no education. Brougham proposed that Par
liament provide temporary aid for the education of the
poor in London, and, if the experiment proved successful,
the plan should be extended to other great towns. Since
Brougham was aware of the religious opposition which had
aborted the Whitbread bill in 180 7, he gave assurances
that his measure would not offend any religious opinions.
Neither would it interfere with the "just principles of 9
our national establishment."
A parliamentary committee chaired by Brougham was
established in 1816, and in 1818 it reported on the condi
tions of elementary education, initially in London and then
throughout the rest of the realm. Evidence was collected
by the committee with the help of interested individuals
and the voluntary educational societies. It convincingly
argued that the provision of education for the poorer
classes in England was limited in extend and defective in
quality. William Allen, a witness before the committee,
was confident that "one half and upward of the children
of the poor are destitute of the means of education, and
a large portion of them, through the neglect of society,
are actually training in vice." He estimated that the
sum of £.400,000 would be sufficient for the education of
9 Ibid,, col. 636.
67
all the uneducated poor. The committee also maintained
that a very great deficiency in educational opportunities
existed in areas where the population was thin and scat
tered. Also, no less than 120,000 children in London
were without any means of education, although their
parents desired that advantage for them.
The reports of the committee were, by modern
standards, inadequate as a social and statistical inquiry,
but they were the first attempt to discover something of
the national condition of education, both in terms of
quality and quantity. The committee recommended parlia
mentary grants for schools already organized. The com
mittee stated, however, that Parliament must decide whether
these public funds whould be vested in commissioners em
powered to make proper terms with private persons desirous
of establishing schools or whether the money should be
entrusted to the National Society and the British and
Foreign School Society in London. On the other hand, in
districts where no private aid could be expected and where
the poor were without any adequate means of instruction,
the committee strongly recommended the establishment of
Testimony of William Allen, June 3, 1816, "The Minutes of Evidence taken from the Select Committee on the Education of the Lower Orders of the Metropolis," Parliamentary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1968), Education of Poorer Classes, I, 123, 163.
••'•l Hansard, XXXIV (June 20, 1816), 1230.
68
tax-supported, free parochial schools. The idea of com
pulsory education that underlay the recommendations of
the committee was an adaptation of the idea embodied in
Whitbread's bill of 180 7, Finally, the committee sought
to deal with the religious issue by placing "the choice
of the schoolmaster in the parish vestry, subject to the
approbation of the parson and the visitation of the dioc
esan." The children of sectarians should not, however,
"be compelled to learn any catechism or attend any Church,
12 Other than those of their parents."
Brougham's "Education of the Poor Bill," based on
the recommendations of his committee, was introduced on
July 11, 1820,to the House of Commons. It provided for
the establishment of a national system of education.
Brougham introduced James Mill's theory that the education
of the poor was the best security for the morals and the
peace of the nation. That was the assumption under which
the Select Committee had been working since 1816. The bill
sought to establish a school in any parish where one was
needed. The schools were to be supported in part by a
local "school rate." The twenty to thirty pounds a year
for the master of the school were to be raised by a tax
12 "Third Report from the Select Committee on
Education of Lower Orders, June 3, 1818," Parliamentary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1969), Education of Poorer Classes, II, 58.
69
on the country gentry, while the expense of building the
school was to fall on the manufacturers, who as a class
13 contributed little to the poor rates.
In his speech introducing the bill. Brougham
asserted that it was not necessary that the schoolmaster
teach any particular religion. This statement was one of
the most forceful parliamentary assertions of undenomina-
tionalism, which was, Halevy recorded, "the direct result
14 of the Benthamite propaganda." The immediate response
to Brougham's speech came from Canning and the bishop of
Gloucester. They collaborated to publish an article in
which Brougham's speech was criticized. They asserted
that the principle of the bill was objectionable to all
Churchmen, since it contradicted the educational principle
of the Established Church that the schoolmaster must be a
Churchman and that the catechism should be taught. The
reaction of Parliament was antipathetic to Brougham, since
the members feared to bring about prolonged discussions
over the complicated religious issues involved with edu
cation. On seeing the strong, expected opposition from
Churchmen, Brougham put into the bill a conciliatory
provision requiring that schoolmasters be members of the
- 2 Hansard, II (June 28, 1820), 49ff.
•^Halevy, Philosophic Radicalism, p. 296.
" "Mr. Brougham.—Education Committee," Quarterly Review, XIX (April & July 1818), passim.
70
Established Church. The bill provided that the parson of
the parish should establish the course of instruction ac
cording to the desires of the parish, although religious
teaching should be limited to the Bible. No denomina
tional catechism was to be used. This measure was a tactic,
as well as a compromise, to gain the support of the Church
men, but the dissenters could not accept it. The dissenters
16 felt that the bill conceded too much to the Church. The
bill caused great alarm among the Roman Catholics and
prominent dissenters, who believed that it would compel
the children of all Christian communions to attend the
places of worship of the Established Church. Not even the
17 Anglicans were satisfied with this compromise. Bentham
believed that "the original cuase of the distrust of the
Dissenters was H. Brougham's project for putting the Edu
cation of the People into the hands of the Church of
18 England parsons."
In the turmoil of sectarian conflict, it was moved
that the "Education of the Poor Bill" be read again in six
months, thus killing it. Brougham, in his evidence before
the Select Committee of 1834, recalled that he withdrew
James Mill to William Allen, January 22, 1821, Brougham Collection, fol. 10759.
•'•2 Hansard, II (July 11, 1820) , 365.
18 Memorandum on Brougham, n.d., Bentham Collection,
Box 107, fol. 353.
71
his bill of 1820 in deference to the objections of the
dissenters.
Brougham's bill was essentially a response to the
increasing demand for a national system of education. But
religious prejudice and the rivalry of the denominational
societies blocked the way until 1833, when the first gov
ernmental grant was given. However, his plan for a system
of elementary education, established by the state for the
benefit of the poor, became widely known to the public.
For the first time such a program had been brought before
Parliament in a comprehensive form. Furthermore, the
Benthamites, the originators of the idea of compulsory
national education in Britain, could now propagate these
principles as a national issue.
The impact of the Benthamites as a force for social
reform and the spread of utilitarian ideas was remarkable
in the 1820s. Bentham, "the philosopher of Westminster,"
was already well-known by educated people throughout
21 Europe. Sectarian Benthamism, commenced by the
1 9 Testimony of Lord Brougham, August 6, 1834,
"Report from the Select Committee on the State of Education," Parliamentary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1970), Education of Poorer Classes, VI, 234.
^°John Foster, "Essays on the Evils of Popular Ignorance," Edinburgh Review, XXXIV (August 1820), 214ff.
•'"E. Blaquierre to Bentham, August 8, 1824, Bentham Collection, Box 12, fol. 189.
72
Bentham-Mill alliance, became a universal utilitarian
philosophy in the hands of the second-generation
Benthamites. Charles Austin spread the principles of
Benthamism at Cambridge, James Mill's articles being
popular among students of political science. The Util
itarian Society was founded in 182 3 by John Stuart Mill,
William Eyton Tooke, later the secretary of the London
University council, John Arthur Roebuck, later elected to
the Reformed Parliament in 1832 as a Benthamite,^ and
others. Although the membership of the Utilitarian Society
never exceeded ten, it established Benthamism as a new
school of political and moral philosophy.
Newspapers and magazines effectively propagated
Benthamite ideas. The Morning Chronicle, edited by John
Black after 1823, became a vehicle for spreading the ideas
of the Benthamite radicals. Black, a man of great honesty
and simplicity of mind, was imbued with Benthamite ideas
through his friendship with James Mill. Through Black,
Mill's social ideas were widely spread. The Morning
Chronicle published articles by J. S. Mill in 1823 on the
question of the free publication of religious opinions.
Bentham also utilized the Traveller, a newspaper organ of
22 For Roebuck's parliamentary activities for the
establishment of national system of education, see chapter V.
73
liberal politics, to which J. S. Mill contributed.^^
Finally, there was the Westminster Review, founded in 1824
by Bentham in collaboration with John Bowring, the editor
of Bentham's voluminous works. Through this journal,
Benthamite radicals attacked the whole concept of an ex
clusively classical education. The existing educational
system was condemned as pernicious, useless, and anti-
^ ^ 24 quated.
These journalistic efforts to propagate Benthamite
ideas were important in themselves, but to implement these
ideas the Benthamites were forced to participate actively
in movements for social reform. Francis Place was the
person who actively promoted social reform based on
Benthamite ideas. His tailor shop in central London was
"in some degree a centre of communication, where all manner
25 of persons bring all kinds of information." Place was
the indefatigable organizer behind the scene, arranging
meetings, collecting funds, writing memoranda, and supply
ing notes for speeches to the public. He led to success
the mechanics movement, awakening the public to the
23 J. S. Mill, Autobiography, pp. 61-63.
24 Westminster Review, I (January, 1824), art. iv
and V (July 1825), art. vii. 25 Place to Brougham, March 23, 1816, Place Papers,
Add. MSS. 37949, fol. 37.
74
26 importance of adult education among the laboring classes.
The Mechanics Magazine, a weekly paper promoting
working-class education, was first published on August 31,
1823, by Thomas Hodgskin, an old friend of Place. Prior
to the publication of the Mechanics Magazine, Hodgskin in
formed Place that he intended to publish a cheap magazine
for mechanics, consisting of one sheet weekly at the price
of three pence. Place concurred with him in thinking that
such a work, if well done, would be very useful and imme
diately command a sale more than sufficient to pay all
27 reasonable expenses. Thomas Hodgskin, the author of
Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital (1825) and
Popular Political Economy (1827), came to be closely asso
ciated with the Benthamite group. He met Place in 1812,
took a great liking to him, and came to regard him almost
2 8 as one of the family. Before Hodgskin settled in London,
he traveled extensively on the continent. James Mill
instructed Hodgskin on what should be studied. Mill
emphasized questions concerning the education of the
Graham Wallas, The Life of Francis Place, 1771-1854 (4th ed., London, 1925), p. 112. For his early life see Francis Place, Autobiography, ed. by Mary Thale (Cambridge, 19 72), and St. John C. Ervine, "Francis Place, the Tailor of Charing Cross," Fabian Tract, no. 165 (London 1912), pp. 88-114.
2 7 "Early History of the London Mechanics' Institu
tion, 1823-1826" (1835), Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27823, fol. 237.
^^Ibid., fol. 240.
75
lower classes, "Are the body of the people taught to read
and write? What ideas and intelligence do they display?
29 Are they full of credulity and superstition?" Place
also maintained communication with Hodgskin during his
journey. Bentham requested Place to invite Hodgskin,
after the return from his journey, to Bentham's home.
Fort Abbey, where Hodgskin would find "a home, and some
other advantages and where you might stay as long or as
short as you please and pursue your studies just as you
1 ^ ..30 pleased.
After his trips to Europe, Hodgskin obtained a
post on the Morning Chronicle through the influence of
James Mill. He at once took an active part in the cam
paign for the repeal of the Combination Laws that, in
effect, made it illegal to form any association of the
nature of a trade union. Through the contrivance of
Place and Hodgskin, Place claimed, the laws were repealed
in 1824.- -
Shortly after the publication of the first issue
of the Mechanics Magazine, Hodgskin informed Place of his
^^Mill to Hodgskin, 1816, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35153, fol. 3.
^^Place to Hodgskin, May 30, 1817, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35153, fol. 6.
"'""Early History of the London Mechanics' Institution, 1823-1826" (1835), Place Papers, Add. ms. 27823, fol. 242.
76
plan to establish a society in London which would be some
what similar to the mechanics institution in Glasgow, the
Andersonian Institution. Place countenanced Hodgskin's
suggestion. Place had recently had several conversations
with Dr, Ure, the successor to George Birkbeck as lecturer
to the mechanics class at the Andersonian Institution, on
the benefits which had resulted and were likely to result
from such a class. Place promised Hodgskin his assistance
in promoting the project, and Place drew up a plan for the
institution on the broadest scale. Hodgskin recommended
Joseph C. Robertson, one of the proprietors as well as one
of the editors of the Mechanics Magazine, as a partner in
the project. According to Place, Robertson was important
to the new project because he desired to devote his maga
zine to the promotion of the new institute. Place did not
object to him as a colleague. Place himself gave up much
of his time to promote the London Mechanics' Institute
with Hodgskin and Robertson. The three men discussed the
plan in detail and concluded that Robertson and Hodgskin
should summarize their conversations in the form of an
address and submit it to Place. The address was later
published in Robertson's magazine as "Proposals for
32 Forming a Mechanics' Institute."
In their proposal, Robertson and Hodgskin wanted
^^Ibid., fol. 243.
77
the new institute to be self-supporting in administration
and finance. They insisted that the mechanics must depend
not on charity, but on themselves, and that they must pay
for their instruction. "Unless they do that, unless they
make such an institution their own and for them, they will
33 never feel that zeal for it." Robertson told the
mechanics that they could never hope to become masters of
their own property unless they rejected the technique of
34 raising funds by means of donations. Robertson and
Hodgskin understood the habits and feelings of the London
working classes, but they had miscalculated the expense
of the establishment Place desired. They believed that
the working classes could and would furnish the means
necessary to establish the institution. Place could not
persuade his two colleagues that self-support would not
work. However, because no harm seemed likely to result
from presenting this financial approach. Place consented,
35 and the address was printed and circulated. Later Place
explained to them in detail the absurdity of depending upon
the mechanics to supply anything beyond current expenses
and the necessity of obtaining donations "to enable them
to take a large house, to build a lecture room large enough
33
^^Ibid., fol. 255.
-^^Ibid., fol. 254.
78
to hold a thousand persons, to fit up a laboratory, a
museum, and experimental workshop, to supply them with
books. . . . " Place's views became so persuasive that
Robertson and Hodgskin concurred, and they agreed that
unless money was procured by donations, the institute
36 would not have much hope of success.
The fund-raising campaign was very successful.
The three original promoters of the London Mechanics'
Institute called on officials of trading companies,
benefit clubs, and leading journeymen with copies of the
address. Henry Brougham and George Birkbeck each sub
scribed twenty pounds. Bentham put his name down for ten
pounds. James Mill contributed five pounds. One third
37 of all funds came from Francis Burdett. Dr. Birkbeck,
a man of administrative experience, interested in the
mechanics movement, and now established in London, read
the printed proposals and wrote to the editor of the
Mechanics Magazine, offering his assistance in the founda
tion of the institute. Place published an essay on the
utility of the London Mechanics' Institute, urging men of
38 the working class to become members.
• Ibid. , fol. 246.
^^Place to J. C. Hobhouse, December 23, 1827, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35148, fol. 9.
^Slace memorandum, April 8, 1826, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35146, fol. 13.
79
The London Mechanics' Institute was established
on December 2, 1823, and Dr. Birkbeck was recommended as
the first president. The participation of Birkbeck and
the excitement which Place caused among the working classes
were the decisive factors making for the successful crea
tion of the institute, which, in turn, greatly stimulated
the sale of the Mechanics Magazine. Place had the task
of drafting an elaborate code of "Rules and Orders," draw
ing on his experience and that of various London literary
and scientific societies. The general principle of the
London Mechanics' Institute was James Mill's axiomatic
theme that "self-love and social love are the same," and
the principle of utility, which could be thoroughly under-
39 stood and practiced only if people were enlightened.
Given the failure of the two earlier Benthamite
efforts to establish institutions for popular education,
the success of the London Mechanics' Institute illustrated
the increased public recognition of the necessity of pop
ular education, especially in the growing industrial
cities. The Benthamites argued in their financial cam
paign that the manufacturers and merchants had an interest
in the enlightenment of the working population and a deep
stake in the moral and intellectual advancement of laboring
39 Thomas Kelley, George Birkbeck, Pioneer of Adult
Education (Liverpool, 1953), p. 102.
80
classes. They had a responsibility to employ for this
end the vast resources at their command. There was,
however, still the fear among property owners that any
kind of education was a threat to their possessions. The
Whig Lord Grosvenor, for example, had considered giving
ijl,0 00 in response to Place's appeal, but he feared that
education would make the people discontented with the
government. Place replied that the working classes were
already discontented and that education would make them
sober, industrious, and careful. "True, but we must take
care of ourselves" was Lord Grosvenor's answer. He gave
nothing.^°
Most people, however, looked upon the proposed
institute favorably. The newspapers, with few exceptions,
praised the mechanics movement and recommended it to the
41 . • notice of all men. "Men of opposite political opinions had acted together with the utmost good faith and cordial-
42 ity in this undertaking." Only the high aristocracy and
the clergy were exceptions. Place grumbled that "not one
clergyman has come forward to connect himself with the
Place memorandum on Lord Grosvenor, n.d.. Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27824, fol. 278.
"Early History of the London Mechanics' Institution, 1823, 1826" (1835), Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27823, fol. 253.
^^Place memorandum, n.d., Place papers. Add. MSS. 27824, fol. 30.
81
43 Mechanics Institution movement." To Churchmen, the move-
44 ment smacked of radicalism, rationalism, and Benthamism.
They were blind to the growing popular interest in science
and to the increasing need for skilled workers, possessing
at least some scientific knowledge. They were afraid of
the development of institutions providing scientific in
struction, the general movement for the provision of pop
ular education, and the working class movement for self-
improvement. Place, who played the most important role in
the successful establishment of the mechanics institute,
"the most useful society on the face of the earth," re
called later that "when this was started, and before
aristocracy had time to be alarmed, I could have obtained
money from a great number of them. . . . When it had been
„ 45 a short time in existence, I could obtain none."
The successful establishment of the London Mechan
ics' Institute gave great impetus to the mechanics move
ment in general. Another mechanics' institute was estab
lished in Spital Fields in 1826, following the example of
the London Mechanics' Institute. In the same year. Place
founded an institution for clerks somewhat similar to the
^^Ibid.
"^Kelley, George Birkbeck, p. 207.
^^Place to J. C. Hobhouse, December 23, 1827, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35148, fol. 9.
82
46 mechanics institutes.
The Benthamite educational principles of cheap
ness, non-sectarianism, and usefulness in life were ex
pressed not only by the establishment of mechanics insti
tutes for the technical education of working classes, but
also by the foundation of London University, an institu
tion of higher education based upon a new educational
perspective. London University was based on Bentham's
ideas of educational reform, progress in science, and the
dissolution of the educational monopoly of the Established
Church. It resulted from the successful alliance of Whigs,
religious dissenters, and Benthamites.
The old universities, Oxford and Cambridge, were
47 in fact "high schools chiefly for the use of the clergy."
They were reproached for teaching only a knowledge of dead
languages and mathematics. It was charged that the uni
versities no longer served any systematic intellectual or
educational purpose. To Bentham, Oxford and Cambridge
were the most despicable and detestable establishments of
his time. The endowments for the university system had
been diverted from the original purposes to personal and
sectarian gain. They were no longer used for morally
^^Place memorandum, March 10, 1826, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35146, fols. 6-7.
^"^Stephen, The English Utilitarians, I, 43.
83
48 acceptable and socially useful ends.
London University was from the start designed to
serve a definite purpose. It was to provide higher edu
cation for those persons unable or unwilling to go to
Oxford or Cambridge, which were exclusive, expensive, and
narrow. The new university was to serve first and fore
most "the middling rich, the small, comfortable, trading
49 fortunes." Consequently, William Allen, the dissenting
Quaker from the middle class, wrote, "no one would rejoice
more sincerely than I should to see that odious monopoly
50 destroyed."
The project for establishing in London a university
which would be free from the tests of wealth and religion
originated with Thomas Campbell, the poet and then Lord
Rector of the College at Glasgow. Early in 1825 Campbell
published a "letter to Mr. Brougham on the Subject of a
London university." In his pamphlet, Campbell pointed out
the utility and necessity of bringing a liberal education
within the reach of the middle classes, who were desirous
to obtain it for their sons, who were excluded from Oxford
48 Bentham's note, c. 1795, Bentham Collection,
Box 169, fol. 171. 49 The Times, February 9, 1825, 4, a-b.
50 A l l e n t o Brougham, June 5 , 1826, Brougham Col
l e c t i o n , f o l . 24130.
84
51 and Cambridge by the great cost and other obstacles. A
university in London had been a favorite project of Camp
bell for three or four years, and Campbell had frequently
52 discussed it with Place. Place concurred fully with him,
but he thought that Campbell would be unable to procure
the necessary funds for such an establishment. Campbell
was resolved, however, to bring his project before the
public in the fall of 1824. Place mentioned Campbell's
determination to James Mill, who was still regretting the
failure of the Chrestomathic School plan, which. Mill felt,
"would be even more useful than a university." Place and
Mill decided to participate in the campaign and to help
53 Campbell in raising funds for the project. Campbell
and Place met frequently in order to formalize the leading
54 points of the project for the university.
In the meantime, after receiving the letter of
proposal from Campbell, Brougham had invited James Mill
and Joseph Hume to dinner in order to discuss the founda
tion of a London university. Both promised to support
•'""The Foundation of London University," 1827, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27823, fols. 391-92.
^^Place memorandum, n.d.. Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35144, fol. 97.
Place's note on London University, n.d.. Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27824, fol. 26.
" Place memorandum, 1826, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35146, fol. 5.
85
55 Campbell in his project. Joseph Hume, who was acclaimed
by Bentham in 1821 as "the only member of Parliament who
thoroughly deserves that name," sent a letter through
Place to Campbell pledging himself to raise B100,000 for
the projected London university and requesting Campbell
57 to draw up a plan for the establishment. Brougham also
brought dissenters, who were deprived of a university
education, into the project. An agreement was reached
whereby the dissenters would join to support a general
1 . . 58
secular university.
The first council of London University consisted
of twenty-four members, elected by ballot on December 19,
1825. Among them were four Benthamites: George Grote,
Joseph Hume, James Mill, and Henry Warburton. Another
avowed Benthamite, William Tooke, was appointed secretary
59 of the council. One of the men essential for the success of the establishment was Sir Isaac Lyon Goldsmid, a
^^"The Foundation of London University," 1827, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27823, fols. 418-19.
^^Bentham memorandum, n.d., Bentham Collection, box 8, fol. 130.
^^Place memorandum, n.d.. Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27824, fol. 26-
^^H. Hale Bellot, University College, London, 1826-1926 (London, 1929) , pp. 21-24.
^^"The Foundation of London University," 1827, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27823, fol. 396.
86
wealthy Jewish philanthropist. As a prominent worker for
nonsectarian education and social reform, Goldsmid gave
practical assistance to Campbell. He welcomed Campbell's
plan of a university free from religious tests, and he
gave the necessary impetus by the prompt acquisition of
the desired university site in Gower Street. Since he was
closely allied with the Benthamites, sharing the same ideals
of education, he enlisted several Benthamites for the
6 0
council. Goldsmid brought into the council his two col
leagues, John Smith and Benjamin Shaw, and Henry Brougham.
Because Brougham was an old friend of Campbell, he was
brought to the council probably by both Campbell and
Goldsmid. In turn. Brougham brought Whig support, repre
sented by James Abercromby, Lord Auckland, Alexander
Baring, Viscount Dudley and Ward, the marquess of Lansdowne,
Zachary Macaulay, Sir James Mackintosh, and Lord John Rus
sell. The Duke of Norfolk spoke for the Catholics, and
the dissenters were represented by Olinthus G. Gregory,
Henry Waymouth, and Thomas Wilson. George Birkbeck of
61 the London Mechanics' Institute was also on the board.
On July 8, 1826, the council discussed Place's
plan of financing the university by inducing persons to
become shareholders, even though Place himself could not
60
Ibid., p. 29
Bellot, University College, London, p. 17.
61.
87
join with the council. The plan called for organized
squads of three persons to contact those who had taken
shares and to induce them to take more. From them the
squads could also get the names of others likely to become
shareholders. When Campbell introduced the plan to the
council. Brougham concurred, but he objected to Place's
participation in the campaign on the grounds that Place's
name, if mixed up with the university, might be injurious
because of his professed atheism. Campbell objected to
Brougham's view that Place's religious opinion had any
thing to do with the plan; it was well-known that the
council itself contained men of various religious opinions
and also some radical thinkers. Upon hearing an account
of the council meeting from Campbell, Place commented
that "the conduct of Brougham is as usual that of a
shuffling lawyer, he is much better known as an infidel
than I am, and he is known too as I am not known and can-
6 2 not be known to be a shuffler in politics." At any rate,
the majority of the members of the council agreed that
Place's plan was useful, and they proceeded to implement
it. William Tooke, the secretary for the council, knew
Place memorandum, July 8, 1826, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35146, fols. 31-33; In fact, although Brougham purported to be a Christian and regularly attended the lawyer's church at the Temple, his close associates treated him as a church-goer only. New, Life of Henry Brougham, p. 372.
88
that Place had taken a very important part in promoting
other societies, and he requested Place to help him form
a detailed schedule. Place and Tooke drafted lists of
persons to be contacted and lists of squads to go around
to collect shares. Among the council members, John Smith,
Lord Auckland, Thomas Campbell, Henry Warburton, James
Mill, and George Grote consented to participate in the
campaign. James Mill was very active and went with Place
to dispose of shares.
Campbell and Place, however, gradually took a
smaller part in the work of the whole project. Campbell,
a poet, had little administrative ability and was depen
dent upon others for the realization of his original
64 plan. In his open letter to Brougham, Campbell had
objected to the excessive influence of the highly privi
leged classes in the project. He had appealed to the
public for support because he believed that "the people
for whose benefit it was to be erected, should have it
65 in their own hands." However, Campbell's wish was not
achieved. One observer agreed that "the greatest diffi
culty was found in raising even a portion of the sum
6 3 Place memoranda, July 16, 17, and 24, 1826,
Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35146, fol. 34. Bellot, University College, London, p. 30.
^^Samuel Hanson to Place, n.d.. Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35144, fol. 391.
89
required and but for the personal exertions of Brougham
and Hume, it would, I believe, never have been built after
66 all." Place could not compete in fund-raising with
Brougham, who had many acquaintances among the privileged
classes. Place wrote Campbell that "the whole matter was
taken up in a manner somewhat different to that which you
and I had contemplated. It went at once into the hands of
those who were most capable of raising the necessary funds
6 7 and my interference was at an end."
Place complained about Brougham's behavior during
the foundation of the university. Place claimed that
several attempts were made by Brougham, playing "so many
tricks" and acting "in such an unprincipled manner as no
one can well imagine," to take from Campbell the credit
6 8
for having originated the idea of an university. There
fore, Place prepared a narrative of the "Origin, Progress
and Present State of the London University" for insertion
in the New London Magazine, of which Campbell was the
editor. Campbell was also aware of Brougham's "trick"
and felt "very unhappy," but because he was a "simple
sensitive creature," he refused to publish the paper, not
^^Ibid.
^'^Place to Campbell, February 26, 1827, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35146, fol. 5.
^^"The Foundation of London University," 1827, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27823, fol. 419.
90
wanting to cause trouble which might affect the founding
69 of the university. Nevertheless, Place was happy to
see the founding of the university. He wrote that, "I am
neither too hard nor too hasty. I do look at London Uni
versity, and at every other matter and thing connected
with 'March of Intellect.'"^°
When the London University project was approaching
fulfillment, Bentham and James Mill became estranged, a
development which had a deeper origin than their quarrel
over borrowed books, which was sharply reflected in their
71
correspondence. Mill ceased contributing to the West
minster Review after October 1826. This estrangement
between the pillars of the Benthamite group resulted from
Bentham's dissatisfaction over the activities and composi
tion of the council of the university, in which Mill had
been an active member from the beginning. Six out of the
ten Education Committee members of the council, including
Mill, Sir James Mackintosh, Lord Lansdowne, and Brougham,
were graduates of the University of Edinburgh. The largest
group of professors appointed consisted of graduates of
^^Ibid., fols. 388-89.
70 Place to J. C. Hobhouse, December 23, 1827,
Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35148, fol. 9. '"'"Mill to Bentham, February 22, 1827, Bentham
Collection, box 10, fol. 186.
91
72
Scottish universities. A proposal to study German uni
versities had been adopted by the council, and Campbell
had visited the University of Berlin in 1826. However,
the actual influence of German universities was slight
compared to that of the Scottish universities.
The refusal of Brougham to appoint John Bowring,
a deserving disciple of Bentham, to the professorship of
English literature disappointed Bentham and stimulated his 73 distrust of the Council's general policy. Brougham
declined Bentham's request because Viscount Dudley and
Ward, with whom Brougham had a political bargain, urged
74 the appointment of Thomas Dale. Bentham's complaints
had begun earlier, when some council members discussed
steps that the council should take for conciliating the
Church of England and for getting some dignitaries or
75 "beneficial" clergymen to serve on committees. Bentham
wanted to "throw out some of the saints who are doing so
much mischief." Bentham attempted to infuse new activity
into the council by the introduction of new members and
72
New, Life of Henry Brougham, pp. 375, 378. 7 3 Bentham to Brougham, September 13, 1827,
Brougham Collection, fol. 10624. New, Life of Henry Brougham, p. 377.
" William Tooke to Brougham, September 6, 1825, Brougham Collection, fol. 18400.
92
76 the ouster of old ones.
Fortunately, this estrangement ended in 1828, when
the official leadership of the Church of England organized
King's College to compete with the secular university
established by the joint effort of the dissenters and the
Benthamites. It is highly probable that "the patriot,"
who anonymously donated a great sum of money to London
77 University in 1828, was Bentham. This occurred about
four years before the death of Bentham, who obviously
wanted to exert influence on the founding of the univer
sity. The channel for the donation was George Grote. He
suggested to Brougham that the donor wanted the fund used
78 for the establishment of a normal school or for the
79 creation of a Birkbeck lectureship of engineering.
The range and character of the subjects taught at
London University during its early years reflected the
educational spirit of Bentham and his school. James Mill,
Henry Warburton, and George Grote, all on the educational
76 Bentham memorandum on London University,
September/October 1827, Bentham Collection, box 107 fol. 353.
77 Grote to Brougham, June 11, 1828, Brougham
Collection, fol. 4963. ^^Grote to Brougham, October 16, 1837, Brougham
Collection, fol. 10625.
^^Grote to Brougham, March 10, [1844?], Brougham Collection, fol. 10625.
93
committee, shaped the details of the curriculum by revis-
80 ing the draft prospectus of Sir James Mackintosh. A
chair of engineering was established in the university.
Bentham's Chrestomathia scheme included technology among
the subjects to be taught at the first stage. Indeed the
preponderance of chairs in science and medicine over those
in arts during the formative years of the university was
good evidence of the Benthamite influence. An outstanding
Benthamite, John Austin, was appointed to the chair of
jurisprudence. The university was also based on the
Benthamite principle that there were not to be "any reli
gious tests, or doctrinal forms, which would impose a bar
rier to the education of any sect among His Majesty's
81 subjects." Dissenters argued that it was "utterly im -
possible to teach theology in a University intended to
comprehend persons of all sects," and they refused to admit
that "nothing contrary to revealed religion should be al-
8 2
lowed in the instruction" of the university. The uni
versity was thought to threaten certain vested interests.
Conservatives argued that university teaching must be
universal, and since London University did not teach
Bellot, University College, London, p. 52.
• The Times, June 6, 1825, 4a.
^^The Times, June 9, 1825, 2e; and June 11, 1825, 3c.
94
religion it could not therefore be a university. Purely
secular education, they argued, was as dangerous to the
state as it was to religion. Secular education must be
opposed, on political grounds, by any government with a
sense of responsibility for the defense of the faith.^^
Despite the routine opposition from the conserva
tive sector of the public, the Benthamites had achieved
by the end of the 1820s remiarkable success in the area of
educational reform and improvement. They had played an
important role in the presentation of a parliamentary bill
for national education, the establishment of mechanics'
institutes, and the founding of London University. The
extend of the Benthamites' participation in these three
events varied. They had only indirect influence on the
parliamentary issue of national education, relying on the
individual efforts of Henry Brougham. The establishment
of the London Mechanics' Institute, for the adult education
of the working classes, was facilitated by the direct
guidance of one Benthamite, Francis Place. In the found
ing of London University, the number of Benthamites ex
erting influence was greatly increased. All three events
did, however, contribute to the awakening of the national
consciousness to the importance of establishing a national
system of education. This trend was furthered in the 1830s
by the actions of the Reformed Parliament.
83 Bellot, University College, London, p. 62.
CHAPTER V
THE NATIONAL EDUCATION ISSUE IN
THE REFORMED PARLIAMENT
The 1830s witnessed a rapid increase in the
legislative and administrative activities of the British
government. The British government, and Parliament in
particular, initiated a variety of means of controlling
and supervising matters which had previously been left
almost entirely in local and private hands. Politicians
slowly recognized the need for state intervention in the
field of social services, such as the control of police,
the regulation of factory conditions, the administration
of the poor laws, the promotion of public health, and the
extension of education. Bentham died in 1832, but the
influence of his philosophy on the development of a com
prehensive and uniform legal code and the establishment
of efficient government was only just beginning.
During the 1830s the government made much greater
For the general reforms and their legislative and administrative backgrounds, see Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement (London, 1959); and Henry Parris, Constitutional Bureaucracy: The Development of British Central Administration (London, 1969), Chapter I.
95
96
use of Royal Commissions, investigative bodies which in
cluded not only members of Parliament but also "experts"
in the fields of political economy and administration.
The Factory Act of 1833 was the result of the investiga
tion of working conditions by a Royal Commission whose
members "had drunk deeply of the distilled waters of
2 philosophic radicalism." The act limited the working
day for children under thirteen in textile industries to
eight hours, stipulating also that each child must receive 3
two hours of education a day. The act did not provide
state funds for the education of the factory children, and
the provision of schools was left to the manufacturers.
Bentham had vigorously asserted that the state possessed
the right to interfere in the economy to protect those who
obviously could not be considered free agents capable of
miaking a contract. The act was strongly enforced by the
first factory inspector, Leonard Horner, an enthusiastic
4 Benthamite.
The improvement in the poor laws and public health
in 1834 was largely the work of Edwin Chadwick and James
^Cecil Driver, Tory Radical: The Life of Richard Pastier (New York, 1946), p. 226.
^3 Hansard, XX (August 13, 1833), 585-86.
" Brian Simon, Studies in the History of Education, 1780-1870 (London, 1960), p. 173. See also John T. Ward, The Factory Movement, 1830-1855 (London, 1962).
97
Kay-Shuttleworth, both of whom served as Royal Commis-
5 sioners. Joseph Parkes, another Benthamite, was one of
the chief architects of the Municipal Corporations Act of
1835, which was the result of a Royal Commission appointed
to inquire into the existing state of municipal government
in England, Wales, and Ireland.^ All of these reforms,
which gave the central government the power to interfere
in social problems, provoked considerable opposition.
Charles C. Greville, a conservative diarist, noted that
"The alarmists are increasing everywhere, and the signs
of the times are certainly portentous." In the field of
educational reform, the Church of England had been, and
was to remain, the main obstacle to governmental assist
ance to national education.
The Benthamites had for many years insisted that
Britain would never experience true progress until a
national system of popular education was established. As
a result of their propaganda, public opinion began to
5 For their Benthamite ideas and activities, see
S. E. Finer, The Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick (London, 19 52) ; and Frank Smith,~Yhe Life and 'Work of Sir J. Kay-Shuttleworth (London, 1923). See also R. A. Lewis, Edwin Chadwick and the Public Health Movement, 1832-1854 (London, 1952).
R. E. Leader, ed., Life and Letters of J. A. Roebuck (London, 1897), p. 70.
7 Charles C. Greville, The Greville Diary, ed. by
Philip Whitwell Wilson (2 vols.; London, 1927), I, 346.
98
consider more favorably the establishment of such a system.
Increasingly opinions such as those in 1831 of Sir William
Hamilton, professor of history at Edinburgh, were voiced:
This is the age of reform: Next in importance to our religious and political establishments are the foundations for public education; and having now seriously engaged in a reform of the constitution, the envy of surrounding nations, the time cannot be distant for a reform in the schools and universities what have hardly avoided their contempt.8
Following the Reform Act of 1832, many petitions were pre
sented to Parliament urging governmental assistance to
education. On February 15, 1833, a petition in support
of a system of national education from the unitarian con
gregation of Greengate, Salford, was introduced into Par-9
liament by Richard Potter, the member for Wigan. On
February 18, 1833, inhabitants of Liverpool also petitioned
the Commons to promote the improvement of national educa
tion. Members of the Literary and Scientific Institu
tion of Worcester petitioned in April for a general system
of national education through John A. Roebuck. T. B.
Lenard presented petitions from the towns of Epping and
Harlow, calling on the Commons to devise a plan by which
William Hamilton, "Addenda ad Corpus Statutorum Universitatis Oxoniensis," Edinburgh Review, LIII (June, 1831) , 384.
^3 Hansard, XV (February 15, 1833), 758-59.
10 3 Hansard, XV (February 18, 1833), 852.
--3 Hansard, XVII (April 15, 1833), 116
99
the children of the poorer classes might be provided with
education. The petitioners pointed out that statistics
showed that crime was most common among those who were
12 the least educated.
In the first reformed Parliament, George Grote,
John Arthur Roebuck, Charles Buller, Sir William Moles-
worth, John and Edward Romilly, and Henry Warburton were
all newly elected members, and they added greatly to the
strength of the Benthamite faction. At this same time,
Francis Place proposed the establishment of a Society for
the Diffusion of Political and Moral Knowledge. Place had
frequently discussed with James Mill such a political orga
nization, which would publish the Benthamite political
programs. Specifically, the society would promote popular
instruction in politics and morals and induce Parliament
to remove the obstructions to the establishment of popular
education. The immediate objective of the society was to
unite the Benthamites and to secure their parliamentary
seats.
A meeting of the new organization was called on
January 1, 18 33, at the home of John A. Roebuck. Place
wrote a prospectus with his accustomed thoroughness, and
- 3 Hansard, XVII (April 25, 1833), 592.
"'•' Place Memorandum on "Society for the Diffusion of Political and Moral Knowledge" [n.d.]. Place Papers, Add. MSS. 27827, fol. 40.
100
Roebuck was later to revise it. Dr. James Kay-
Shuttleworth, who later became the secretary of the Edu
cation Committee of Privy Council, was one of the persons
of whom Place planned to request funds for the financing
of the society. Joseph Hume was to be president, and Henry
15
Warburton was to be vice-president. The number of pos
sible literary contributors to the society's publications
was over twenty-five, among whom the majority were 1 c
Benthamites. The project did not long survive its em
bryonic stage. Although the Benthamites now represented
a majority of the parliamentary radicals, they failed to
organize a radical, utilitarian party. The fundamental
reason for their failure was the fact that the radicals,
by their very nature, had difficulty in producing magnan
imous leaders who would admit men of differing political
viewpoints. Neither George Grote, Joseph Hume, nor
John A. Roebuck was qualified to lead Edward L. Bulwer,
"Project of the Society for the Diffusion of Political and Moral Knowledge, 1832-3," Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35154, fol. 169.
•^^Ibid. , fol. 161.
•^^Ibid. , fol. 169.
17 • • A psycho-sociological study of this subject is
found in Franklin Dewitt Piatt, "The English Parliamentary Radicals—Their Collective Character, Their Failure to Become a Party, and Their Failure to Find a Leader: A Study in the Psycho-Sociological Sources of Radical Behavior, 1833-46," A Ph.D. Dissertation at the Washington Univ. (St. Louis), 1969, passim.
101
Sir William Molesworth, or Charles Buller, or vice versa.
The radicals themselves seemed to recognize the difficulty
of politically uniting men who were accustomed to pursuing
theories and ideals. One of the radicals defended their
lack of a political party by arguing that "The reformers
are devoted to no man nor party in the State, though they
are disposed to assist any person or persons in any effort
18 for the benefit of the community."
Although the Benthamites failed to form their own
political organization, they nevertheless believed that a
new era in politics had arrived. It was time to legislate
solutions to social reforms based on public utility and
rational judgment. Their utilitarian belief in progress
was exemplified by their support for the improvement of
medical science. It was impossible for medical students
ans surgeons to be educated in their profession without
having the opportunity to dissect cadavers. Legal impedi
ments threatened, however, the acquisition of the needed
1 9 bodies. As early as 1826, Bentham had advocated the
introduction of a parliamentary bill making the admission
of a patient to a hospital conditional on the use of his
body, in case of death, by anatomy classes for the benefit
• G. Ensor to Francis Place [n.d.]. Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35153, fol. 57.
•'•3 Hansard, IX (December 8, 1831) , 132-33.
102
of medical science. Bentham pointed out that such a
measure would effectually reduce the frequent violation
20 of graves, a not unusual occurrence at the time.
Robert Peel opposed any legislative action on the
question of cadavers; parliamentary action, he believed,
would be "inopportune owing to easily aroused public opin-
21 ion on tiie subject." Two years later, a parliamentary
committee was appointed to inquire into the best mode cf
remedying the present defective system of securing bodies
for medical study. In 1829 Henry Warburton introduced a
bill, emanating from the committee, which passed the Com
mons only to be thrown out in the Lords. On December 15,
1831, Warburton moved a new bill, based on a petition from
the Hunterian Society, to regulate schools of anatomy.
This bill would have promoted the study of anatomy by re
pealing the act forbidding the dissection of bodies of
murderers and allowing surgical operations on the body of
any individual. Warburton, in the true utilitarian spirit,
argued the necessity of affording proper facilities for
the study of anatomy. He insisted that the prejudices of
the population should be subordinated to the service of
^^Bentham to Robert Peel, March 27, 1826, and April 24, 1826, Bentham Collection, fols. IIA+B.
•'•Robert Peel to Bentham, April 14, 1826, Bentham Collection, fols. IIA+B.
10 3
2 2 the state and to the progress of science.
In supporting Warburton, Sir Richard Vyvyan argued
that "if to further the end of science, the prejudices that
exist against dissection are to be allayed; that feeling
of degradation which was now associated with it in the 23
public mind must be removed." Warburton asked Brougham
24 to support his Anatomy Bill. The bill went to its second
reading on January 20, 1832, but it was withdrawn because
of strong opposition. Place later recalled the issue:
"The working classes were nearly unanimous in their detes-
25
tation of the bill and disliked Warburton." The Bentha
mites consistently argued, as was shown in the case of the
Anatomy Bill, that the government should take the initia
tive in enlightening the ignorant and superstitious to the
needs of the new era of science. They warned that the
government would produce immense indirect mischief if it
neglected its duty and shrank from doing the good that it
ought to do.
In the Reformed Parliament, the most active
Benthamite was John A. Roebuck, whom Place praised as "my
^^3 Hansard, IX (December 15, 1831), 300-01.
23 Ibid., col. 305.
24 Henry Warburton to Lord Brougham, January 30,
1832, Brougham Collection, fol. 18148. 25 Francis Place to Lord Brougham, July 1, 1837,
Brougham Collection, fol. 5793.
104
26 image," Place was the real force behind encouraging
27 Roebuck to run for Parliament from Bath. As a disciple
of Bentham with radical advanced political opinions.
Roebuck entered Parliament on December 14, 1832. In his
various addresses and speeches. Roebuck declared himself
to be an earnest supporter of the most radical reforms.
He advocated triennial parliaments, vote by ballot, an
elective magistracy, abolition of the legal monopoly en
joyed by the Inns of Court, corporation reform, free trade,
disestablishment of the Church of England and the use of
its property to further secular ends, repeal of the taxes
on knowledge, and a national system of education. Roebuck
wrote to Place, pledging himself "to be an enemy to all
restrictions on trade; to the Fathers and Church Establish
ments; to advocate ballot, and an extension of the suf-
28 frage; in fact to be an out and out radical." The need
for a national system of education was clearly expressed
in Roebuck's speech in the House of Commons on July 30,
Place to George Grote [n.d.J, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35144, fol. 357. Born in India the son of a civil servant. Roebuck was educated in Canada, and he knew little of party politics in Britain. After coming to London, Roebuck became acquainted with John Stuart Mill, and he joined the Utilitarian Society. See Leader, ed., Life and Letters of J. A. Roebuck, pp. 41-42 and passim.
^^Francis Place to George Grote [n.d.]. Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35144, fol. 357.
^ John A. Roebuck to Francis Place, June 1832, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 37949, fol. 258.
105
1833, He argued that the first and chief duty of the
state was to prevent social evils and that punishment was
a crude and inefficient means of attaining that end; edu
cation was the most efficient of the means by which human
29 wisdom could promote virtue and happiness.
On March 14, 1833, Brougham announced to the House
of Lords that he was abandoning the principle of compul
sory education upon which he had based his bill of 1820.
He explained that the voluntary principle had made such
great progress during the preceding thirty years that a
compulsory system was no longer necessary. Brougham had
sent 500 letters to clergymen in every county, requesting
information on the schools in their respective parishes.
The response showed that whereas in 1818 there were 14,000
unendowed day schools, educating 478,000 children/in 1828
there were approximately 2 3,000 unendowed schools, edu
cating 1,030,000 children. Under these circumstances, he
agreed that it would be unwise to disturb the voluntary
efforts. As Lord Chancellor in Grey's Whig government.
Brougham's announcement seemed appropriate to the political
strategy of his party. Roebuck, representing the Bentha
mites, did not agree with Brougham's changed view on a
compulsory scheme of education, however.
29 3 Hansard, XX (July 30, 1833), 147-48; Leader, ed., John A. Roebuck, pp. 184-85.
• °3 Hansard, XVI (March 14, 1833), 635.
106
On July 30, 18 33, Roebuck demanded a resolution
from the House of Commons acknowledging the principle that
the education of the people was a matter of the state's
concern. Roebuck argued that if the House of Commons
acknowledged the great principle that the government ought
to superintend the education of the people, the first step
must be to enunciate to the nation its acknowledgment of
31 the principle. Roebuck believed that this acknowledgment
was itself a practical beginning and that it would lead
directly to an important practical result. In demanding
Parliament's recognition of the necessity of the state's
"aid and care" for national education, he enumerated the
benefits which would be attained by such a system. To
Roebuck the most important objective of education was to
give the people "a thorough understanding . . . of the
circumstances on which their happiness depended, and of the
powers by which those circumstances were controlled." The
public would then learn "what a government could, and what
II 3 2
a government could not do to relieve their distresses."
He then proceeded to point out the basic function of edu
cation in society:
"•3 Hansard, XX (July 30, 1833), 140-41
- Ibid., col. 143.
107
We shall have no more unmeaning discontents, no wild and futile schemes of Reform; we shall not have a stack-burning peasantry, a sturdy pauper population, a monopoly-seeking manufacturing class; we shall not have a middle class directing all their efforts to the repeal of a single tax, or the the wild plan of universal robbery; neither will there be immoral landlords wishing to maintain a dangerous corn monopoly; or foolish consumers, who will suffer it to remain.^^
Roebuck argued that the education of the majority had to
be taken into consideration. Democratic government was
conductive to happiness only if it was good government,
34 which necessitated the education of the people.
Roebuck advocated the appointment of a cabinet
minister who would be responsible for the general super
vision of all schools. This minister would decide where
to build new schools and apportion money to each school
district. The country should be divided into school dis
tricts, the voters of each district electing a school
committee. School funds would come from taxes, existing
charitable endowments, and a school pence. All denomina
tions would be treated alike. Roebuck also suggested
compulsory education for all children between the ages of
seven and fourteen. He pointed to the good examples set
35 by Prussia, France, and the state of New York. George
Grote seconded the motion, convinced that the defects in
33
Ibid.
" Ibid. , col. 145.
^^Ibid., cols. 147-48; 163-64.
108
British education could be remedied only by government
action. Roebuck's bill received a long and serious
debate in Parliament. However, there was overwhelming
opposition from both political parties. There was con
siderable fear that state regulation would discourage
37 private charity.
Three weeks after Roebuck's motion, the House of
Comraons assented to the proposal of Lord Althorp, Chancellor
of the Exchequer, and voted fc20,000 for the building of
school houses in England and Wales. Lord Althorp had pre
viously objected to any governmental interference in edu
cation, and he had not disclosed his intention to propose
the grant. The appropriation of these government grants
was made a responsibility of the Treasury, which distrib
uted them through the National Society and the British and
3 8 Foreign School Society. In selecting these two societies
as the administrators of the funds, the Whig government
divided its favors between the Church of England and the
dissenters.
The Treasury laid down the conditions which appli
cants had to meet. No application would be entertained
Ibid., col. 166.
37 Ibid., cols. 16 8-73; See also James Murphy,
Church, State, and Schools in Britain, 1800-1970 (London, 1971) , p. 16.
• 3 Hansard, XX (August 17, 1833), 733-36.
109
which was not recommended by one of the two societies. In
addition, the entire grant had to be spent on the construc
tion of a school building; no money could be spent for any
other purpose. Populous areas were given preference in the
allocation of grants. No grants were to be made until the
applicants had raised at least half of the total cost of
the school from voluntary contributions. Finally, appli
cants were required to submit their accounts for audit.
The report of the Committee of Supply passed on August 17,
39 1833.
Althorp's proposal was a Whig measure. Its imme
diate objective was to stimulate local efforts to improve
education. The Whigs, in proposing this moderate reform,
hoped to mute the inevitable criticism directed at them
for interfering in the local question of education. How
ever, two important principles were established by this
acceptance in 18 33 of annual government grants for the
erection of school houses for the education of the poorer
classes. First, the state acknowledged some obligation
for providing education to the poor. Second, the state
finally agreed to fund schools not associated with the
Established Church. Both principles were upsetting to
people who regarded the spending of public money on edu
cation and the forcing of children to attend schools as
^^Ibid., col. 736.
110 40 infringements on individual liberties.
The Benthamites were not, however, satisfied with
Althorp's lukewarm measure. Henry Warburton criticized
the government's lack of a mature, comprehensive plan for
national education. Without such a system he felt that
41 the grants would be useless. The administration of these
grants did prove to be extremely loose. The Treasury had
no officers who could effectively screen the applications
which it received. Instead, the Treasury relied on tlie
supporting reports from the two societies. In effect the
National Society and the British and Foreign School Society
42 determined which applicants were suitable.
The following year, 1834, Roebuck moved the estab
lishment of a select committee to inquire into the means
of establishing a comprehensive system of national educa
tion. Sir William Molesworth seconded the motion. The
Benthamite principle of governmental intervention was well
expressed in Molesworth's speech: "The intervention of
the legislature would give a new character and dignity to
schoolmasters, who, instead of being the mere servants of
the caprice of individuals, would be regarded as public
Murphy, Church, State, and Schools, pp. 16-17.
• 3 Hansard, XX (August 17, 1833) , 734.
"^^Kay-Shuttleworth, Recent Measures, pp. 40-42.
Ill 43
functionaries." He stressed the modern concept of the
state role in education and the educational duty of an
administrative state. He wanted to see
the mass of the people accustomed to good habits, equally acquainted with their rights and duties, prepared to act as good men and citizens, and possessed of strength of mind and heart to follow the path of duty, as the result from education and from the interference of the government to raise the mental and moral culture of the people. . . . By increasing their knowledge you increase their means of consulting and promotina their real welfare.44
Therefore, it was necessary, Molesworth argued, for Par
liament to inquire how far the government could promote
the cultural life of the people.
However, the majority of the members of Parliament
still did not appreciate the principal objectives of the
motion, and Roebuck was forced to compromise, omitting the
word "national" in reference to his proposed system of
education. Lord Althorp's substitute motion was adopted.
This motion set up a select committee to inquire into "the
state of the education of the people in England and Wales,
and into the application and effect of the grant made by
the last session for the erection of school-houses, and
to consider the expediency of further grants in aid of
45 education." The committee was reappointed on March 3,
^^3 Hansard, XXIV (June 3, 1834), 130-31.
" " Ibid. , cols. 127-128.
" Ibid., cols. 137-39.
112
4 6 1835, as a result of a motion by Roebuck.
In the House of Lords, Brougham continued his
efforts to achieve parliamentary support for national
education, despite the fact that he had earlier abandoned
the principle of compulsory education. On May 21, 1835,
he proposed that Parliament aid in the establishment of
new schools, especially in large cities, and in the train
ing of schoolmasters. He also suggested that Britain
establish a Board of Commissioners with the power to
A T
supervise the schools regulated by Parliament.
On July 3, 1835, Brougham introduced an Education
and Charities Bill. In order better to administer the
funds granted by Parliament for the purposes of education,
he proposed that administrators responsible to the Crown
and Parliament should supervise the expenditure of them.
He also proposed to appoint officials with inquisitional
and quasi-judicial powers to supervise charitable trusts.
They would be appointed by the Crown and empowered to take
cognizance of estates held in trust for the purposes of
education. He proposed to establish a Board for this pur
pose consisting of the President of the Council, the Lord
Privy Seal, the Secretary of State for the Home Departraent,
^^3 Hansard, XXVI (March 3, 1835), 495-500.
" 3 Hansard, XVII (March 21, 1835), 1331-33; Henry Lord Brougham, Speeches (3 vols., Edinburgh, 1838), II, 288.
113
and three paid commissioners. They would exercise a con
stant and effective control over estates held in trust
4 8
for charities so as to prevent their mismanagement.
Objections were made to this bill on the grounds that it
would have a mischievous effect on voluntary contributions 49 for educational purposes.
In 1837 Brougham directly demanded the establish
ment of a department of public instruction. It would
superintend applications for funds from the government
grant and regulate the administration of charitable
funds. Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, opposed 51 Brougham, however, and the bill was dropped.
Brougham's last education bill was introduced on
December 1, 1837. Its general principle was Benthamite:
Parliament should use its powers to extend and improve the
education of the people. Brougham urged that, regardless
of whether the amount of the education grant was increased,
a public department of education was essential in order to
superintend and to administer charitable funds, to remedy
breaches of trust, and to use the educational funds
^^3 Hansard, XXIX (July 3, 1835), 222-23, and Ibid., XXX (August 14, 1835), 479-80.
^^3 Hansard, XXXVI (February 2, 1837), 79.
^^3 Hansard, XXXVIII (July 26, 1837), 1618-19.
•••Ibid., col. 1683.
114
52 effectively. Brougham's proposed education department
would consist of a board of five commissioners: the
President of the Council, the Lord Privy Seal, and three
paid commissioners, who could be removed only by an address
of both houses of Parliament. One of the political members
would become the head of the department and perform the
same duties as the minister of public instruction had in
other countries. The three paid commissioners would act
as judges in order to prevent undue influence by the gov
ernment and to preserve uniformity in the administration
53 of the department. The joint consent of the local
authorities in a district and the central department
would be required before any school rate could be levied.
This mutual security measure was a precaution against too
great an interverence on the part of the central govern
ment and against local abuses on the part of local author-
54 ities. In addition, the department would have the power
to place all mechanics' institutes, literary societies,
and educational institutions of various kinds under cer-
55 tain restrictions and rules.
Despite Brougham's compromises, the antagonists
^^3 Hansard, XXXIX (December 1, 1837), 444-45
^^Ibid., col. 446.
" Ibid. , cols. 447, 450.
^^Ibid., col. 459.
115
of popular education continued to fear the growth of cen
tralized governmental power. The bill was first postponed
and them permitted to die.
The Benthamites were reasonably optimistic about
their chances to establish a national system of public
education after the parliamentary reform of 1832. They
were encouraged by the political departures of the newly
reformed Parliament with its increased number of Bentha
mites, by the more enlightened public opinion as revealed
by the frequent petitions supporting national education,
and by the activities of the royal commissioners, who
sympathized with the Benthamites on the need for social
reform. A new era had certainly arrived. The efforts of
the Benthamites in Parliament, despite their frequent
failures, served to publicize the existence of progres
sive force in national politics. The Anatomy Bill, based
on a purely utilitarian principle, proved traditional mis
conceptions and superstitions could be removed, or at
least circumvented, by political and administrative action,
Roebuck's bill for the establishment of a national
system of education and Brougham's numerous efforts to
create an education department were abortive, although
they did indirectly encourage the Whig government to set
up the annual education government grant. These grants
^^3 Hansard, LXIV (August 14, 1838), 1175.
116
served as a stepping stone for the establishment in 1839
of the Committee of the Privy Council for Education, the
original British education department. The Benthamites
were not unaware of the dangers presented by an excessively
powerful central government producing conflicts with local
authorities and discouraging voluntary activities for
social improvement. However, they were convinced that
the local and voluntary efforts were defective; such ef
forts produced either wasteful competition or indifference
unless coordinated by the central government. Ultimately
this coordination was to be provided by the Committee of
the Privy Council for Education.
CHAPTER VI
THE CENTRAL SOCIETY OF EDUCATION AND THE
MANCHESTER STATISTICAL SOCIETY
The agitation of the Benthamite group in Parlia
ment for a system of national education declined after
1835, when Roebuck ceased to present his program. One
problem was leadership; the Benthamites were seriously
weakened because of the loss, in one way or another, of
most of their intellectuals. James Mill became ill and
died in 1836. Leadership then passed to Francis Place,
whom H. Beaumont, the editor of the Northern Liberator,
acknowledged as "the real head of that party of Malthusian
Radicals to which belong Grote, Hume, Warburton, Roebuck,
Molesworth, the renegade Fonblanque, etc." Actually,
Place never proved successful as a guiding spirit. Fur
thermore, Hurae and Roebuck lost their parliamentary seats
in the 1837 election. Therefore, Hume's bill of February
1837 which aimed at establishing additional parish schools
in Scotland^ was the last attempt at educational reform by
•''Place memorandum, December 30, 1837, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 35144, fols. 336-37.
^3 Hansard, XL (February 6, 1837), 821.
117
118
the Benthamite radicals. Roebuck decided to support the
more moderate scheme of education based on the voluntary
principle, giving up the principle of compulsory education,
which Brougham later in December 1837 introduced in the 3
House of Lords. Place became bitter as a result of the
defeats of Hume and Roebuck. He blamed Hume and "the
Reformers in the House of Comraons" with the exception of
Roebuck. "In no one instance did they pull together as
they ought to have done. On every occasion they submitted 4
to Lord John." Future prospects for national education
seemed to be scarcely more promising than those for polit
ical reform. Grote was also discouraged, arguing that:
anything like effective government interference for the promotion of education would array against it a vast host of dishonesty & prejudice, and the Tories have shown us that they are adept in working the cry of irreligion against opponents, however little real or just ground may be furnished for it.5
Despite these expressions of disappointment by some
of the leading Benthamites, by 1837 national education was
finally attracting wide public attention. Many observers
still believed that the spread of popular education should
be left to the voluntary efforts of people and disliked
•3 Hansard, XXVI (March 3, 1835), 495 ff. ; 3 Hansard, XXXIX (December 1, 1837), 434.
4 Place to Mrs. Grote, August 23, 18 37, Place
Papers, Add. MSS. 35144, fol. 336.
5 Grote to Brougham, October 16, 18 37, Brougham
Collection, fol. 10624.
119
the idea of having the government interfere in matters
affecting morality. Some reformers held to the principle
of voluntary education simply because they distrusted in
creased government intervention. Opposed, however, were
a growing number of people who believed that public edu
cation was the duty of government. They wished to see
both originating and controlling power vested in a ministry
of education. They supported the principle of state in
tervention; government should aid schools already in exis
tence and establish new ones where needed with the aid of
local authorities. Such advocates of national education
urged the establishment of an educational society which
could promote the public interest in popular education
without sectarian religious beliefs.
The Central Society of Education originated at
a meeting convened in the summer of 1836 in St. James,
London. While other educational societies had confined
their exertions principally to the establishment of schools,
the Central Society conceived that "it was necessary to
ascertain more exactly the objects of education, and to 7
determine the means of attaining them." To advance this
James Simpson to Brougham, April 9, 1835 and July 8, 1837, Brougham Collection, fols. 23611, 15915.
7 The Central Society of Education, Strictures on the Publications of the Central Society of Education (London, 1837), p. 3.
120
purpose, the Central Society attempted "to give to the
theory of education a more scientific character than it g
had yet assumed."
The Central Society of Education publicized a
variety of educational opinions. These were put forward
as a means of acquainting the public with the various
proposed reforms which had been made regarding education.
The real object of the society was, however, to educate
the public on the subject of education and to convince it
that the introduction of a system of compulsory education
was necessary. This education should be entirely secular
in nature. The society also called into disrepute the
efforts made by existing societies. It wanted, for ex
ample, to replace the monitorial system by a more personal
method of teaching. The ultimate object of the society
was to establish a state system of education. In order
to achieve that final object, however, it first had to
develop among the public a more enlightened attitude
toward educational reform. It had to prepare the public
for a national system under which education, to a very
great extent, would be placed under the control of the
^ 9 governraent.
The membership of the Central Society of Education
^Ibid.
9 Ibid., p. 4.
121
consisted primarily of persons who already agreed with
the principle of state-controlled education. Lord Denman,
Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, became the president.
Thomas Wyse, an Irish Catholic M. P. from Waterford, was
named secretary of the Central Society, The committee of
management included three hard-core Benthamites: George
Grote, Sir William Molesworth, and Edward Strutt. Lord
John Russell, Lord Lansdowne, and Henry Warburton became
life-members. William Allen and Joseph Hume also partici
pated in the society. The close association of Thomas
Wyse with the Benthamites was evidenced by the fact that
he was one of the members of the Parliamentary Committee
initiated by Roebuck in 1833. Other Benthamites such as
John Bowring and Sir William Molesworth were active mem
bers of the Committee.
Given the society's membership, it soon developed
into a political organization. Its membership included
not only those who had a genuine interest in educational
Thomas Wyse entered Parliament at the general election of 1830, the first after Catholic emancipation in which he took a leading part. Throughout his parliamentary career Wyse was an "enlightened liberal." The establishment of a board of national education in Ireland was due to his detailed plan for Irish education. In 1837 he published an exhaustive work on "Education Reform" and wrote several papers in the publications of the Central Society of Education. Dictionary of National Biography, XXI, 1187-91.
Central Society, Strictures, p. 4.
122
reform but also many who wanted to use this issue for
political ends. All of the committee members agreed that
a popular system of national education was essential to
12 the welfare of Britain. The legalistic and rationalistic
educational philosophy of Thomas Wyse was expressed in the
following statement: "it is not the laws which should bend
to men, but men who should be gradually brought to bend to
13
the laws." This legalism of Wyse was completely in
accord with the essence of Benthamite philosophy. The
educational principle of the Central Society of Education—
that "it is the school which manufactures the nation"
was identical to what James Mill called social and polit
ical education.
The Central Society of Education contended that
educational improvements must be implemented by the state.
It objected to the existing state of education, where
"ignorance or knowledge, morality or immorality, became 16
a mere matter of luck." B. F. Duppa, who succeeded
12 J. C. Colquhoun, National Education: The
Present State of the Question Elucidated (London, 1839), p- 12.
13 Thomas Wyse, First Publication of the Central
Society of Education (London, 1837), p. 33. Central Society, Strictures, p. 4.
Burston, James Mill on Philosophy and Education, pp. 198 ff.
16 Central Society, Strictures, p. 4.
123
Wyse as the secretary of the society, argued strongly for
compulsory education and for the principle of state inter
vention:
The whole of the next generation should have the full advantage of them [educational improvements]. They must be enforced, and this by the state. There are, no doubt, evils attending this; as, for instance, the great powers which would be given to government; but if the government be responsible, can its power be too great?!^
On the matter of religious education, the Central
Society was categorically opposed to any interference by
the Church of England in what was considered to be pri
marily a concern of the state. The members of the society
antagonized those who believed that the religious commu
nities should have a voice in the manner in which religion
was taught in the elementary schools. They argued that
national education could succeed only if the peculiarities
18 of religious belief were ignored in the schools. The
society criticized the Borough Road School, which was
established under the auspices of the British and Foreign
School Society, because it did not have "a more enlightened
19 spirit than that of the National Society in Westminster."
The Central Society wanted to exclude Biblical
instruction from the regular intellectual instruction
1 7 Wyse, First Publication, p- 21.
18
Ibid., p. 6 .
Central Society, Strictures, p. 4
19
124
in order to achieve a national system of schools with
democratic control and state inspection. To avoid those
difficulties which naturally resulted from differences of
religious opinion, no religious instruction whatsoever
should be provided in government schools. Portions of
the Scriptures might be read in such schools as specimens
of literature or as examples of morality, but the teachers
would not have the authority to enforce scriptural precepts
The clergy would be practically excluded from any control
over the government schools. Any loss which might result
from the absence of a clergyman was to be replaced by the
itinerant visits of an inspector, an assistant commis
sioner of the central government. Under the Central
Society's plan, the government would establish in every
district of England a schoolmaster of secular instruction
with an adequate salary voted by Parliament. The society
also advocated that the government should have the power
to prevent individuals from acting as schoolmasters who
had not oeen certified.
The members of the Central Society agreed with
the fundamental principle that the Anglican Church should
not serve as the educator of the people. They believed
that each locality should provide for the religious in
struction of the resident poor but that the government
^^Wyse, First Publication, p. 14.
125
should provide the means of intellectual education. The
locality should determine the type of religious instruc
tion, but the government should ensure that such education
was provided and, at the same time, that a system of
secular education was established. •'"
On June 14, 18 38, Thomas Wyse, the leader of the
Central Society, moved in the House of Commons the appoint
ment of a Royal Commission on Education in order to
achieve the programs of the society. He pointed out that
Parliament had admitted the principle of state interven
tion by the educational grant of 1833. Therefore, he
argued, it was necessary to appoint a Royal Commission
which would screen and supervise applications for the edu
cational grants. He also proposed a system of central and
local inspection. The former would acquire information,
and the latter would conduct the detailed inspection and
examination of the schools. It was a striking anticipa
tion of later developments, but the motion lost in 1838
22 by four votes.
In the meantime, a Select Committee of the House
of Commons had been appointed on November 30, 1837, to
consider the best means of providing useful education for
•'•3 Hansard, XLIV (July 9, 1838), 44.
^^3 Hansard, XLIII (June 14, 1838), 716, 738; Colquhoun, National Education, p. 12.
126
the children of the poorer classes throughout England and
Wales. It reported that there was a great deal of illit
eracy among the poor, and it recommended an increase in
the Treasury grant which was distributed through the
National Society and the British and Foreign School Society
The committee could not, however, agree whether or not
government money should be given to schools which did not
belong to one of the two societies. The Committee con
cluded that an increase in the grants to the two societies
was the only practical way to attain its educational
23 objectives.
The conservative viewpoint of the Established
Church was represented in Parliament by Sir R. Inglis,
who objected to the mode by which the existing govern
ment aid to education was distributed. He argued that
the education of the people ought to be left to the
"national church. " " Actually, the Commons was unsure
as to how the Treasury grant was distributed. Most of
the grant to the two societies was necessarily given to
the wealthier schools. There was, therefore, no way to
know whether the public's money was distributed in a way
^•^"Report from the Select Committee on Education of the Poorer Classes in England and Wales (1838)," Parliamentary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1970), Education Poorer Classes, VI, 523.
24 3 Hansard, XLIV (July 9, 1838), 45
127
which would achieve the general educational objectives
of the government. It was generally recognized that some
legislative action was needed to establish a system of
inspection and a ministry of public education, which would
ensure a fair distribution of the grant.^^ This was also
the objective of the Central Society.
The Central Society of Education ceased to exist
in 1839. It was accused of planning to force on the
nation a compulsory system of secular education, which
would be contrary to the true cause of Christianity. The
bishop of London presented a petition from Chettenham
signed by 5,048 persons. The petitioners opposed a system
of education which was compulsory and totally secular in
character. They were therefore alarmed at "the Society
for Secular Education." The president of the Central
2 6 Society, Lord Denman, defended its ideas in vain. All
was not lost, however. When Lord John Russell, the Home
Secretary, introduced a similar, government plan the next
27 year, the House of Commons supported the action. The
society's two main principles were conceded: state
control and school inspection.
3 Hansard, XLIII (June 14, 1838), 715; John Hurt, Education in Evolution: Church, State, Society and Popular Education, 1800-1870 (London, 1971), pp. 27-31.
^^3 Hansard, XXXIX (November 27, 1837), 208-12.
27 See chapter VII, p. 145.
128
Another organization which helped to publicize
the educational issue in the 1830s was the Manchester
Statistical Society. This society was established in
1833 by William Langton and Dr. James Phillips Kay,
later James Kay-Shuttleworth, both of whom were honorary
officers of the Manchester and Salford District Provident
Society, Samuel and William Rathbone Greg, and Benjamin
Heywood. They were "highly individual but of similar
mould, religious but unsentimental, sociable but serious
minded, eager for reform but saved from extremes by fun-
2 8 damental common-sense and a capacity for compromise."
They discussed the need for an agency which could collect
social data on the physical and moral condition of the
poorer classes of Manchester. The first meeting on
September 2, 1833, established the objectives of the
society: "to assist in promoting the progress of social
improvement in the manufacturing population." The members
declared themselves to be "a society for the discussion
of subjects of political and social economy, and for the
promotion of statistical inquiries, to the total exclusion
29 of party politics." They were especially concerned
about the state of education. Kay-Shuttleworth and some
2 8 T. S. Ashton, Economic and Social Investigation
in Manchester, 1833-1933: A Century History of the Manchester Statistical Society (London, 19 34), p. 10.
29 Ibid., p. 13.
129
friends toured Derbyshire in order to publicize the prac
tical objectives of the society. The society aimed at
advancing practical human needs rather than simply the
science of statistics. It was the real beginning of
applied social science in England. "^
The Manchester Statistical Society undertook
between 1834 and 1837 a close examination of the nature
and efficiency of the instruction in the schools in the
boroughs of Manchester, Salford, Pendleton, Bolton,
Liverpool, Bury, and York. It published a series of re
ports based on these systematic surveys of education.
In May and June 1834 tlie society began a house-to-house
survey of educational opportunities on two districts of
Manchester. The findings showed that about one-third
of the children between the ages of five and fifteen in
the borough of Salford, for example, attended no school
at all; the others received either the negligible instruc
tion of a Sunday School or of a common day school. The
report concluded that these schools were incapable of
32 performing any real educational function. Therefore,
30 A. V. Judges, "James Kay-Shuttleworth, Pioneer
of National Education," A. V. Judges, ed., Pioneers in English Education (London, 1952), p. 112.
31 Ashton, Economic and Social Investigation in
Manchester, p. 26-33. 32 Samuel Greg, Report of a. Committee of the Man
chester Statistical Society on the State of Education in the Borough of Salford in 1835 (London, 1836), p. 11.
130
the society strongly recommended the establishment of a
board of public education, which "would be hailed by all,
who have seen the glaring deficiencies of the present
state of education, as the first step in the performance
of a duty, which is imperative with every enlightened 33 government."
The central figure of the Manchester Statistical
Society's effort to improve popular education was Kay-
Shuttleworth. His educational activities began much
34 earlier. He was faced with, and came to understand,
the problems resulting from industrialization. He was
concerned about the dangers arising from the neglect of
the intellectual and moral improvement of the working
classes which was already apparent in the slum areas of
many industrial towns. He predicted that "the conse
quences . . . must be social disquiet little short of
35 revolution." His study of urban England brought him
into contact with the mixed world of industrial wage
earners, improvident laborers and their neglected off
spring, prostitutes, and all the misery resulting from
gin shops, insanitary houses, cellar life, long hours of
^^Ibid., p. 43.
34 Frank Smith, The Life and Work of Sir James
Kay-Shuttleworth (London, 1923), pp. 28 ff. 35 James Kay-Shuttleworth, Recent Measures for
the Promotion of Education in England (London, 1839), p. 18.
131
work, and child labor. Even after he became a successful
physician, Kay-Shuttleworth's concern was with social
medicine. He identified cholera as a disease resulting
from unsanitary conditions. He believed that medical
neglect and malnutrition caused much disease, and re
flected on the widespread ignorance of personal hygiene.
He believed that the real cure of disease was education,
which would extend self-respect among the poor and reform
, 36 morals.
In 1831 Kay-Shuttleworth published, anonymously,
a Letter to the People of Lancashire Concerning the
Future Representation of the Commercial Interest. In
it he stressed the need to regulate the distribution of
wealth among the several classes of society. He partic
ularly warned the manufacturers and merchants to be aware
of their interest "in the civilization of the working
population." They must be conscious not only of "how
deep is their stake in the moral, intellectual, and reli
gious advancement of the labouring class, but how deep
is their responsibility to employ for this end the vast
37 resources at their command." He believed that the only
effective method of curing the problems of the manufac
turing population, which threatened the health of the
^^Smith, Kay-Shuttleworth, pp. 43-44.
3 7 Kay-Shut t leworth, Recent Measures, p . 41.
132
entire nation, was to provide the poor with good secular
education. Education would enable the poor to understand
the reasons for their physical condition.^^ He became
convinced that the improvement of the condition of the
working class should be one of the most urgent tasks of
the central government. The government must preserve the
stability of the social order. He asserted that if the
working class "are to have knowledge, surely it is the
part of a wise and virtuous government to do all in its
power to secure to them useful knowledge, and to guard
them against pernicious opinion."
Kay-Shuttleworth believed that the educational
policy of the central government was a branch of social
reform and a shield against revolutionary violence. In
short, his political and economic beliefs were similar
to those of the Benthamite radicals. "The preservation
of internal peace, not less than the improvement of our
national institutions, depends on the working class."
In his educational plans for the poor and in his belief
in the efficiency of the central government.
3 8 Smith, Kay-Shuttleworth, p. 44.
39 James Kay-Shuttleworth, Four Periods of Public
Education (London, 1862), p. 232. 40 Kay-Shuttleworth, The Moral and Physical Con
dition of the Working Class in Manchester in 1832, republished in Four Periods of Public Education, p. 61.
133
Kay-Shuttleworth was a follower of Bentham. Education
was the most important means of eradicating the germs of
pauperism from the rising generation. He believed that
the nation's prime concern in the educational field was
to rescue from squalor and vice the poor and neglected
child, a task which was as much concerned with the forma-
41 tion of character as with intellectual achievement.
Kay-Shuttleworth was not only intellectually
convinced of the necessity for reform in the education
of the poor, but he actively participated in the campaign
to realize this objective. He was very active in re-
42 viving the Mechanics' Institute. In 1834 he was also
invited to serve as an assistant Poor Law Commissioner
under his fellow Lancastrian Edwin Chadwick, the able
administrator and disciple of Bentham. His work as a
field researcher for the Poor Law Commission continued
even after 1839, when he assumed responsibility for
national education under the committee of the Privy
Council on Education.
In 18 37 Kay-Shuttleworth made an educational
tour of Scotland. He found that the monitorial system
employed in the schools of the National Society and the
British and Foreign School Society was unsatisfactory
Ibid.
"^^Smith, Kay-Shuttleworth, p. 28.
134
43 and that the system of class teaching was superior.
He had already strongly recommended, through the report
of the Manchester Statistical Society, the establishment
of a teachers college. He believed that the government's
educational grants would be more usefully employed in
this way. He did not consider an improvement in the
conduct of the schools possible unless the teachers were
44 better qualified.
In 1837 the leading members of the Manchester
Statistical Society formed the Manchester Society for
Promoting National Education. William Langton was
treasurer, and many of Kay-Shuttleworth's former co
workers were on the committee of educational investiga
tion. In 1838 this committee petitioned Parliament for
an education bill. The petition asked that Parliament
pass legislation which would provide children of all 45
classes an improved and permanent system of education.
The petition was sent to the bishop of Durham. Kay-
Shuttleworth was aware of the open hostility to a plan
involving the complete elimination of religious instruc
tion by the religious communities, such as that proposed
earlier by the Central Society of Education. However,
^^Ibid., p. 48.
"^^Greg, Report of a Committee of the Manchester S t a t i s t i c a l Soc ie ty , p . 22.
45 3 H a n s a r d , XLII (May 7 , 1 8 3 8 ) , 937-44
135
he wanted to avoid raising the religious issue; he be
lieved that this would be the best political tactic.
He conceded that "all instruction should be hallowed by
the influence of religion; but we hold it to be equally
absurd and short-sighted to withhold secular instruction,
on the ground that religion is alone suf ficient." "^
Therefore, the petition of the Manchester Society pro
posed the course pursued by the British and Foreign
School Society of prescribing Bible classes in every
school. The placing of the entire Scriptures, without
notes or comment, in the hands of every child was urged
as the best system hitherto devised for meeting the dif
ficulties arising because of the variety of religious
47 sects. The urgent need of the poor for education
overrode the triviality of the conflict over the issue
of religious education. Kay-Shuttleworth reported that
"the impression which I derived concerning the condition
of the pauperized agricultural Labourers was that ex
cepting from the general influences of society, they
48 had made very little progress in some centuries."
46 Kay-Shuttleworth, Recent Measures, p. 45.
" 3 Hansard, XLII (May 7, 1838), 939.
4 8 Minute of Evidence by James Kay-Shuttleworth,
"Reports, Papers and Correspondence Relating to the Commission on Popular Education in England, 1861-62." Parliamentary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1969), Education General, VIII, 311.
136
The Central Society of Education and the Man
chester Statistical Society worked for the same goal—
the establishment of a national system of public educa
tion under the responsibility and supervision of the
central government. There were, however, differences
in their methods. The Central Society of Education con
sisted primarily of parliamentary radicals and their
Whig allies. It operated within the framework of party
politics. Its very existence became a victim of the
opposition of the established political interests of the
Tory conservatives and the Church of England. The short
life of the society was inevitable, but its contribution
in publicizing the necessity of state intervention in
national education was considerable. Francis Place was
disappointed in Hume and the other Benthamite parlia
mentary members, but the activities of Thomas Wyse
through the Central Society of Education represented
a vigorous Benthamite propagation of the need for edu
cational reform.
The influence of the Manchester Statistical
Society on the action of the government in 1839 was
considerable, providing substantial statistical data
to support its appropriate recommendations for the
establishment of national system of education. The
successful achievements of the society were largely
due to the professionalism of James Kay-Shuttleworth,
137
the modern, non-political administrator and field worker.
He was an early example of the "experts" whom Bentham
expected to be the real architects of the modern adminis
trative state.
CHAPTER VII
THE CREATION OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE
PRIVY COUNCIL ON EDUCATION
The first major action taken by the British gov
ernment in the area of educational reform had come in
1833, when Parliament voted B20,000 for distribution by
the Treasury to the National Society and the British and
Foreign School Society. Although this measure had not
produced any marked improvement in national education,
opinion within and without Parliament has experienced a
remarkable change in the 1830s. Largely because of the
work of the Central Society of Education and the Manchester
Statistical Society, by 1839 Thomas Wyse, Brougham, and
R. A. Slaney all had education plans before Parliament
having for their object the extension of education by
means of governmental aid. All three plans agreed that
the first and most important step was the appointment of
a commission, board, or ministry of education, which could
dispense the annual governmental grants, inspect schools,
and report to Parliament. Out of these plans, plus that
of the Whig government of Lord Melbourne, the Committee
of the Privy Council for Education was born.
138
139
Lord John Russell, the Home Secretary, contem
plated educational reform based upon the statistical
data in the report of the Select Committee on the Poor
Law Amendment Act, on which he had served as chairman.
Kay-Shuttleworth's evidence, which recommended the estab
lishment of county or district schools, had attracted
the attention and support of many parliamentary members.
Kay-Shuttleworth proved with statistical data that the
present system of education for the poor children in
workhouses was wasteful. Lord John Russell was in the
best position to introduce a scheme for further govern
mental aid to education. Russell, however, would have
been reluctant to oppose the Tories and the Church of
England had he not had the support of numerous Whigs and
their radical allies. The latter were determined not to
allow the traditional claims of the Established Church
to obstruct the creation of a national, state-aided 2
system of education for the poor classes.
Russell pointed out in a letter to Brougham that
education was becoming an urgent matter, and he stressed
the importance of relying on the state to make education
''•"Report from the Select Committee on the Poor Law Amendment Act (18 38)," Parliamentary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1969), Poor Law, III, 36-37.
^James Murphy, Church, State and Schools in Britain, 1800-1970 (London, 1971), p. 13.
140
general rather than depending upon the work of voluntary
3 societies. He believed that unless education was made
more general it would not be possible to extend the fran
chise, despite the fact that political freedom could not 4
be confined to any one class of men. Russell therefore
demanded that Brougham keep the education question in 5
Parliament free from party and religious dispute.
Russell had served as vice-president of the British and
Foreign School Society since 1824, and he was decidedly
in favor of its system, believing that education must in
the end have a liberal and voluntary principle. He
believed, however, that the fierce dispute between the
Church of England, represented by Richard Aglionby Slaney,
the British and Foreign School Society, represented by
Brougham, and the Central Society of Education, repre
sented by Thomas Wyse, could not be calmed by a moderate
agreement satisfactory to each party. Russell argued
• Russell to Brougham, August 15, 1837, Brougham Collection, fol. 38162.
^Russell to Brougham, August 24, 1837, Brougham Collection, fol. 14423; 2 Hansard, VII (April 25, 1822), 73-5.
^Russell to Brougham, October 20, 1837, Brougham Collection, fol. 14428.
^Russell to Brougham, October 2, 1837, Brougham Collection, fol. 14425.
141
that unless the entire question of education was taken
"into the hands of Government" there was no means to
prevent "those who have local property from having local
influence." He admitted the possibility of problems re
sulting because of the government's control over educa
tion, but he was convinced that "this evil ought to be
submitted to, rather than leave such multitudes in 7
ignorance and debasement."
One year later, in 1838, Russell was ready to
undertake government action. He invited William Allen
and other members of the British and Foreign School
Society to the Home Office on August 11, 1838. After a
full discussion of the problems of introducing universal
education for the poor classes, Allen agreed to the imme
diate need for governmental action; the public was ex-g
pecting something to be done. The problem of providing
for religious education arose again in their discussion.
Allen criticized the Anglicans for stubbornly opposing
any religious tolerance in popular education. Russell
concurred with Allen, recalling that the Established
Church had argued that the children of the poor needed
no formal education at all. Russell further criticized
" Russell to Brougham, August 27, 1837, Brougham Collection, fol. 14424.
^Allen to Brougham, August 4, 1838, Brougham Collection, fol. 13832.
142
the Church of England for following the lead of the Church
of Rome by attempting to monopolize popular education 9
without being able to do it. Allen himself agreed that
he would not oppose the admission of the catechism into
the government-aided schools provided that it did not
form a part of the regular school curriculum and was
taught to the children of Churchmen only.
Russell was fully convinced that it was the duty
of the state to further and encourage education. He
presented his plan for educational reform to the cabinet
on November 26, 1838. Melbourne, the prime minister,
had doubts about the project, and he questioned the
advantages of education as a means of promoting the
progress of society. He pointed out examples of men
and families who, without education, had succeeded in
life. Russell, however, decided to proceed with his
plan of establishing an educational committee by an
order of the Privy Council under the sanction of the
Queen. He wrote a public letter to Lord Lansdowne,
Q
Russell, Recollections and Suggestions, p. 149.
Allen to Brougham, January 16, 1839, Brougham Collection, fol. 20471.
•'••'"Lord John Russell, Some Further Thoughts on National Education for the United Kingdom (London, 1875), p. 6.
143
President of the Privy Council, proposing a scheme of
national education embodying the principle that "the
youth of the kingdom should be religiously brought up"
12 and that "the rights of conscience should be respected."
The scheme was intended to be the beginning of a general,
equal, and liberal education system under the direction
13 of the state.
On February 5, 1839, Russell made an important
speech outlining the principles of his educational re
forms. He contrasted the lamentable deficiency of edu
cation in England with the provisions made both in the
more autocratic European countries and in the more demo
cratic United States. His plan included an increase in
the government grant from B20,000 to 630,000 a year, the
creation of a Committee of the Privy Council for Educa
tion or a Board of Education to superintend the expendi
ture of the funds voted by Parliament, the establishment
of a normal school, and the creation of a school inspec
tion system. The committee was to consist of the
President of the Privy Council and four other cabinet
members. It was to determine the expenditure of any
money voted by Parliament for the purposes of education
"'" Russell, Recollections and Suggestions, p. 150.
•'•"3 Hansard, XLIII (June 14, 1838), 731-32.
^^3 Hansard, XLV (February 12, 1839), 274-75.
144
in England and Wales and to appoint school inspectors.
Lord Lansdowne explained that the object of the govern
ment's plan was to introduce a complete educational plan,
but he promised that the measure would be as acceptable
as possible to all.
On April 10, 1839, the first step of the govern
ment plan was initiated when a committee of education was
created in the Privy Council. The establishment of the
Committee of the Privy Council on Education did not re
quire an act of Parliament, being implemented by the
royal prerogative. In this way it was possible to avoid
party and religious rivalry. The committee thus estab
lished consisted of four cabinet members—Henry, Marquis
of Lansdowne, Lord President of the Council; John William,
Viscount Duncannon, Lord Privy Seal; Thomas Spring Rice,
Chancellor of the Exchequer; and Lord John Russell. The
Lord President and the Lord Privy Seal were to serve on
the committee; the Chancellor of the Exchequer had an
obvious interest in the distribution of grants; and the
Home Secretary was naturally concerned with any such
domestic matter. Lansdowne and Russell decided that James
Kay-Shuttleworth should be appointed secretary of the
•'•3 Hansard, XLV (February 14, 1839) , 351.
145
Committee. Kay-Shuttleworth was warned by Lansdowne to
consider the offer carefully; the future was uncertain.
Kay-Shuttleworth accepted the post, however, pledging to
work to ensure governmental control over Education.
The newly appointed Committee of the Privy Council
on Education went immediately to work. On April 13, 1839,
it recommended the establishment of a teachers training
school. The proposal was drawn up by Kay-Shuttleworth
who foresaw the establishment of a whole system of normal
schools under state management. The normal school was
designed to educate teachers for the rapidly increasing
number of schools for the poorer classes.
Russell's plan aroused a storm of opposition.
Russell wrote that "the violence of bigotry and fanati
cism excited the members brought together by party hos-
18 tility." Lord Stanley proposed to defeat the plan and
to rely upon the Church of England as the recognized and
legitimate teacher of religious and secular education.
19 On a division he lost by a margin of five votes.
1 r
Minute of the Committee of Privy Council on Education, April 13, 1839, Public Record Office, Education, 17/1/2644, p. 1.
""•" Smith, Kay-Shuttleworth, p. 45; H. M. Pollard, Pioneers in Popular Education (London, 1956), p. 234.
Russell, Recollections and Suggestions, p. 374.
-'•3 Hansard, XLVIII (June 20, 1839), 681.
146
Illustrative of the parliamentary divisions over educa
tion was the fact that the grant for 1839 passed by only
two votes. The planned normal school produced, however,
strong opposition from the Church of England, led by the
archbishop of Canterbury, because of the question of what
religious training should be provided to the students. "
The Church of England opposed the introduction
of general religious teachings into schools under state
authority, asking for the continuance of the church's
complete control over religious education. Because the
Anglican Church was the Established Church, it should
direct the education of ail the people. The church could
not accept the principle that the state could decide what
part of the curriculum was appropriate for Church of
England chaplains and what was not. The church believed
that the dispute over the teaching of religion in the
projected training school foreshadowed the old, stormy
21 issue of "imperium versus sacerdotium."
The constitution of the normal school aroused
controversies with respect to elementary education in
general. The normal school was not intended to antici
pate in detail the character of state education in England,
but its approach was accepted by many as an indication of
^"^Ibid. , cols. 1234-55.
21 Judges, "James Kay-Shuttleworth," pp. 118-19.
147
the type of education which the government intended to
establish. In the normal school religious instruction
was to be divided into general and special types. The
general religious instruction was to be given by the
master of the school and to consist of the basic truths
of Christianity. The special religious education, which
included the discussion of doctrinal differences, was to
be taught by a chaplain to Church of England students and
by a licensed religious minister to the dissenters. In
the normal school, therefore, teachers from all religious
denominations were to be educated together. Immediate
controversy arose because of the means of teaching reli
gion in the normal school; it was conceived to be an in
dication that the government desired to establish reli
gious equality in the government schools. The Church of
England, entered a most emphatic protest against a general
22 system of education founded upon such a basis.
Because of strong protests from many peers, the
government withdrew the scheme for a normal school. Al
though the principle upon which it was originally founded
was simply to procure an adequate number of accomplished
teachers, the attempt was regarded as the first step
toward the establishment of education upon the basis of
^^3 Hansard, XLVII (May 3, 1839), 756-64; 3 Hansard, XLVIII (July 5, 1839), 1234.
148
religious equality. Robert Wilberforce, the Anglican
theologian, argued that "such a training school [was]
, , , inconsistent with the principles of every church
in Christendom." He condemned the school as "a college
for the common teaching of every and no religion, . . .
an institution for extending heathenism among Christians."^^
Brougham expressed regret that the rules of the normal
school had been unnecessarily stated in a minute of the
Council and that the Established Church had been need-
24 lessly alarmed. Thus, one of the first decisions made
by the committee had to be withdrawn in the face of bitter
opposition from the Church of England.
In June 1839 the committee announced two important
changes concerning the government grants. First, the
committee was willing to make grants to schools which did
not belong to the two great education societies--the
National Society and the British and Foreign School
Society. The recommendation of one of these two societies
had been accepted as necessary to qualify for a grant for
the construction of a school. The experience of six years
23 Robert Isaac Wilberforce, A Second Letter to the
Most Noble the Marquis of Lansdowne, on the System of Inspection Best Adapted for National Education (London, 1840), pp. 1-2.
24 Brougham to the Duke of Bedford, September 6,
1839, Tracts on Education, I (1820-1839), 4-5. Library of the Ministry of Education.
149
had made the government aware that these grants might be
open to public question because they were administered
by two non-responsible bodies. A change in the means of
awarding the grants seemed desirable. Secondly, the com
mittee changed the rule that areas which raised a high
proportion of the needed funds would be favored in the
allocation of the grants. This rule worked to the dis
advantage of very poor and populous districts, which had
difficulty in raising a sufficiently large amount of
, . . 25 subscriptions.
The most significant step taken by the committee
was the initiation of a process whereby the state regu
larly inspected all schools receiving government grants.
This concept of inspection was a typically Benthamite one,
with its anxiety to check everything. The Factory Acts
had established the precedent of a government inspector,
moving around to investigate the effectiveness of the
2 6 agency in question. Leonard Horner, one of the first
factory inspectors, who had once found a class being edu-
27 cated in a coal cellar, was an ardent Benthamite. He
2 S Minute of the Committee of Privy Council on Edu
cation, June 3, 1839, Public Record Office, Education 17/ 1/2644, p. 3.
^^N. Ball, Her Majesty's Inspectorate, 1839-1849 (London, 1963), p. 33.
Eric Midwinter, Nineteenth Century Education (New York, 1970), p. 34.
150
served from 1827 to 1831 as the warden of London University
After 1831 Horner had served as one of the four chief in
spectors established by the Factories Regulation Act.
Based on his long experience as a factory inspector,
Horner was convinced that the only satisfactory means of
ensuring an education for the lower classes was to estab
lish a state system of inspected schools. In 1839 the
factory inspectors made a special report on the working
of the educational clauses of the factory acts. The in
spector system was quickly expanded to apply to the field
of education, and inspectors became very much a part of
2 8 British education.
From the very beginning, the Committee of the
Privy Council on Education had the unique advantage of
being able to make inspection a condition of a grant-in-
aid. The committee made it clear that, whenever money
was granted to aid in the construction of a school or as
a gratuity to the teacher, the government had the right
of inspection to determine whether secular instruction
29
was being given in a satisfactory manner. Kay-
Shuttleworth was authorized to prepare plans for carrying
out the necessary inspection of the grant-in-aid schools.
2 8 Ball, Inspectorate, p. 33.
^^Minute of the Committee of Privy Council on Education, April 20, 1839, Public Record Office, Education, 17/1/2644, p. 2.
151
He planned to develop a non-denominational system of in
spection. He suggested to the committee that "a part of
any grant voted in the present year may be usefully
applied to the purpose of inspection and to the means of
acquiring a complete knowledge of the present state of
education.
School inspection was not designed to permit the
government to interfere with religious instruction; the
inspectors were to confine themselves to supervising the
31 general improvement of education. At a meeting at
Lansdowne House, Russell and Lord Lansdowne discussed
the touchy issue of inspection with the archbishop of
Canterbury, the bishop of London, and the bishop of
Salisbury. The bishop of London warned Russell that if
the state and the church continued fighting they could
only injure one another. The participants at the meeting
agreed on principle that the state and the Established
Church should cooperate on the most friendly terms in
education. The two sides agreed to a system of inspec-
32 tion devised by Lansdowne. The bishops, however.
• Minute of the Committee of Privy Council on Education, June 3, 1839, Public Record Office, Education, 17/1/2644, p. 3.
•''Minute of the Committee of Privy Council on Education, January 4, 1840, Public Record Office, Education, 17/1/2644, p. 5.
^^Lansdowne was of the opinion that there should be a Board of Inspection and that a cabinet member should
152
insisted that the schools of the National Society were
to be inspected by men whose appointment had been con
curred in by the bishops. Their reports on the schools,
comprising religious as well as secular instruction, were
to be sent to the bishop of the diocese and the Committee
of the Privy Council on Education simultaneously. Finally,
the two parties agreed that the inspectors were to be
appointed on denominational lines and that their reports
should be sent to the bishops after their presentation
33 to the Committee.
The compromise had important results. Henceforth
for thirty years the inspectorate was to develop on a
denominational basis, with separate inspectors for Church
of England, Nonconformist, and Roman Catholic schools.
This not only led to administrative waste, but it encour
aged rivalry between the inspectors and sectarian jealousy
among the schools and teachers. However, the principle of
government interference with the general improvement of
education was concretely established.
In December 1839 John Allen and Hugh Tremenheere
preside over it. The three secretaries of state should be members of the board along with three other members, only one of whom should necessarily be a lawyer. Russell to Brougham, October 3, 1837, Brougham Collection, fol. 14428. The father of Lord Lansdowne, Lord Shelbourne, first Marquis of Lansdowne, was a patron of Bentham and a correspondent of the French encyclopaedists. Halevy, History of English People, I, 181.
33 Russell, Recollections and Suggestions, p. 150.
153
were appointed the first two inspectors of schools. While
an important part of an inspector's work was to visit from
time to time the schools receiving grants of public money
in order to ascertain that the grants were being used
effectively and to get accurate information as to the
discipline, management, and the methods of instruction
pursued in the schools, the inspectors also had the im
portant duty of encouraging local efforts for the improve
ment and extension of elementary education. The employment
of inspectors on this second task provided the local pro
moters of schools with an opportunity to learn what im
provements in school management, in school discipline, and
34 in the methods of teaching had proven most successful.
As Kay-Shuttleworth stated, "the inspection of schools
aided by public grants is a means of cooperation between
35 government and the schools."
Inspection was not intended as a means of exer
cising control but as a method of affording assistance;
it was not to be regarded as restricting local efforts
but as encouraging them. Kay-Shuttleworth particularly
instructed the inspectors to be careful on their visit
to schools. The inspectors were supposed to explain to
I
Minute of the Committee of Privy Council on Education, January 4, 1840, Public Record Office, Education, 17/1/2644, p. 5.
Ibid.
154
the local authorities that a principal object of the in
spection was to afford the inspectors an opportunity to
provide improvement. The inspectors were warned that they
were in no respect to interfere with the instruction,
management, or discipline of the schools; nor were they
to press upon the schoolmasters any suggestions which they
36 might be disinclined to accept.
The reaction of the Benthamites to the creation of
the Committee of the Privy Council on Education was, at
first, negative. Francis Place had no comment on the
whole process. In 183 8 he was engaged in drawing up the
"People's Charter" at the request of the Chartists, al-
3 7 though his "habit of mind" was different from theirs.
Brougham was dissatisfied with the results of the govern
ment's action. Upset at the government's compromise with
the Established Church, Brougham commented that "an uni
versal national system of education was utterly unattain
able, if the Church of England was excluded from its
3 8 superintendence." He lamented that "the interests of
the people and of education were sure to fall prostrate,"
because of sectarian jealousy between the dissenters and
36-rK-^ Ibid.
37 Ervine, "Francis Place," p. 24-25.
^^3 Hansard, L (August 26, 1839), 592.
155
39 the Anglican church.
Another Benthamite critic was Charles Buller who
stated that "national education is to be given up to Tory
opposition." Nevertheless, Buller and other Benthamites
found some cause for encouragement. Buller welcomed the
40 Russell plan as "the small end of the wedge." The
Benthamites would have been happy to see the establish
ment of a state normal school on the "right principle"
of excluding all sectarian education. The Benthamites
thought, however, the the government plan should be sup
ported because it did introduce the general principle of
state intervention in popular education. This might "stir
the people for the real system of universal national
education."
The creation of the Committee of the Privy Council
on Education was the best example of the determination
of the British government to expand its administrative
machinery and through it to direct educational policy.
The practical need both to increase government grants for
educational imtprovement and to create a governmental
agency to enforce more stringent conditions for their
^^Ibid., L, 594.
"^^Charles Buller to Place, May 27, 1839, Place Papers, Add. MSS. 37949, fol. 401.
Ibid.
156
disbursement lay behind the establishment of the Com
mittee of the Privy Council on Education. Because of
Kay-Shuttleworth's ability, the Committee became the
Department of Education before he retired in 1849. Kay-
Shuttleworth was one of a growing number of believers in
the government's role in the reformation of society. It
is difficult to determine to what extend Kay-Shuttleworth
was influenced directly by Bentham, but he was certainly
influenced by having worked with Chadwick as a Poor Law
Commissioner. The social evils which he witnessed in
various industrial towns forced him to become a social
reformer. Just as Bentham abhorred revolutions of any
kind, Kay-Shuttleworth believed that "educational policy
was a branch of social reform and a shield against revo-
42
lutionary violence." Benthamites believed in a benev
olent state promoting the social good by education,
sanitation, and legislation. Kay-Shuttleworth was an
ardent disciple of this Benthamite creed. His belief
in state intervention to improve popular education was
based on the ground of utility. The current toward more
state intervention moved slowly, but its direction was
seldom in doubt.
^^Judges, "Kay-Shuttleworth," p. 117.
CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUSION
The debate over Bentham's influence will continue
Although some historians argue, and will undoubtedly
continue to argue, that the increased social involvement
of the central government resulted from sheer necessity,
the need to respond to the social transformations arising
from industrialization, such a contention appears too
restricted. The antagonism to a strong central govern
ment was widely shared by the politically powerful, be
they Tory or Whig, Churchman or dissenter. Some ideology
was necessary to challenge the paternalism of the aristoc
racy. Benthamism, whose basic premise was the need to
overthrow the old, autocratic concept of state, served
such a role.
Bentham did not confine himself to an attack on
things as they were, nor did he agree with the laissez-
faire solutions of the political economists with regard
to such social problems as poor relief and education.
Benthamism attempted to solve problems by harmonizing the
economic policy of free enterprise with the social policy
of state intervention. Elie Halevy pointed out early an
157
158
apparent inconsistency between the Benthamite approach to
law and politics, which assumed state intervention to
produce a harmony of interests, and the desire for laissez-
faire in economic affairs. However, Bentham saw no
contradiction between a belief in natural economic laws
and a belief in the usefulness of positive legislation
and administrative centralization. Free enterprise in
business could be justified on the grounds of utility;
state intervention in the area of social problems could
be justified on the same grounds. "Though Benthamism
envisaged collectivist state action, it was to be geared
to the needs of individualism. Utilitarianism wished to
release the potential of individual interests working
naturally in harmony together, but recognized that a
minimum of efficient, economical state intervention was 2
necessary to produce artificially the same harmony,"
Benthamism could be a mixture of collectivism and
individualism. As Ernest Barker has pointed out, "there
is no antithesis between individualism and collectivism
in the sense of a belief in the development of individual
personality and a belief in the collective service necessary
Halevy, Philosophic Radicalism, pp. 486ff.
2 Derek Eraser, The Evolution of the British Welfare State (London, 1973), p. 94,
159
for individual development," Only enlightened individuals
could become qualified members of a collectivist society.
Using Harold Perkin's terminology, in Benthamism "there
was a synthesis of the entrepreneurial and professional
ideals, , . . the latter involved the professionalization
of government, the accumulation of expertise, the solution
of problems by the application of reason and the creation
of an administrative state." The modern concept of the
administrative state is at the very core of Bentham's
political philosophy.
Although it is difficult to determine accurately
the importance of Benthamite ideas on educational reform,
some qualified conclusions are possible. Bentham's
administrative and educational ideas were not openly
accepted by most influential politicians in the early
nineteenth century. During this period of repression,
these ideas were seen as similar to the dangerous ratio
nalism of the French Revolution. The spread of Benthamism
was thus delayed because of the English hostility to all
things French caused by over twenty years of war. Almost
two decades after Waterloo, Edward Lytton Bulwer, who
3 Ernest Barker, Principles of Social and Political
Theory (Oxford, 1951), p. 273. Eraser, British Welfare State, p. 105; Harold
Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780-1880 (London, 1969), p. 319.
160
wrote England and the English in 1833 to promote Ben
thamism, dedicated the first part to Talleyrand, stating
that "we no longer hate the French."^ In addition,
Benthamism was identified early as an attack on religion,
specifically on the Church of England. Many in England
feared the loss of the Church's power and the ascendency
of the state.
Nevertheless, the administrative and educational
ideas of Bentham did permeate, in a Fabian sense, the
consciousness of leading politicians such as Brougham,
Lord Lansdowne, and Lord John Russell by various means.
There were the continuous propaganda activities of the
royal commissioners on the poor laws, factory conditions,
and the education of the poorer classes and of various
parliamentary select committees on education; there were
the private efforts for the improvement of public educa
tion, such as the West London Lancastrian Association, the
Chrestomathic School plan, the London Mechanics' Institute,
and London University; there was journalistic support;
finally, there was the creation of large educational
societies such as the Central Society of Education and the
Manchester Statistical Society. Eventually, by mid-century,
Benthamite ideas were sufficiently widespread that there
Edward Lytton Bulwer, England and the English, ed, by Standish Meacham (Chicago, 19 70), p. xvi.
161
was no longer a definite Benthamite "faction" as had been
the case in the 1820s and earlier.
The first two chapters traced the emergence of
the ideas of the modern administrative state, largely the
work of Bentham and James Mill. Included within the
administrative state was a provision for a centralized
educational system. Although Bentham was a faithful
follower of the Enlightenment, he did not recognize such
principles of the French Revolution as the idea of natural
rights and the social contract theory. Instead, he pro
posed the principle of utility as the sole criterion for
judging the effectiveness of government and for determining
what reforms in education, as well as in other areas of
society, should be implemented.
In the first three decades of the nineteenth
century, there v/ere ever more frequent attempts to apply
Benthamite ideas to the solving of practical problems.
These attempts, discussed in chapters three and four, were
supported by a small but steadily growing number of
adherents. In the Whitbread bill of 1807 the principle
of non-sectarian, public education was openly debated in
Parliament for the first time. More important were such
.efforts as the West London Lancastrian Association (1813),
the Chrestomathic School plan (1814), the London Mechanics'
Institute (1823), and London University (1825). These
162
attempts at educational reform increased the number and
influence of the Benthamites, Brougham, Romilly, William
Allen, Place, Hume, and Ricardo all looked to the
"Philosopher of Westminster" for intellectual stimulation.
The select committees studying the education of the poor
between 1816 and 1818 and the Education of the Poor Bill
of 1820 attracted nation-wide attention to the problems
of English education. Many, but not all, of the Bentha
mite plans in the 1820s failed to achieve anything signi
ficant; they were casualties of sectarian rivalry and
political conservatism.
The Benthamite ideas of state intervention in
social problems did permeate Parliament by the 1830s, as
discussed in chapters five and six. The issue of state-
controlled national education based on the non-sectarian
principle gained increased support in Parliament through
the efforts of Roebuck, Warburton, Thomas Wyse, and
Kay-Shuttleworth. Parliament became increasingly
conscious of the conditions in the factories, the ineffi
ciency of the poor law, and the inadequacy of educational
opportunities. The spirit of Benthamism was best
exemplified in Parliament by Warburton's Anatomy Bill,
but the most significant achievement was the recognition
by Parliament of the principle of state responsibility
for the education of the people by the government grant
in 1833. The great exertions of the Central Society of
163
Education led by Thomas Wyse and of the Manchester
Statistical Society led by James Kay-Shuttleworth pre
pared the way for the establishment of the education
department in England, introducing a system of school
inspection and reinforcing the principle of state inter
vention.
The creation of the Committee of the Privy
Council on Education in 1839, the subject of chapter
seven, represented the final stage of Benthamite influence-
the triumphant conquest of the British bureaucracy by a
Benthamite, Being appointed secretary of the original
education department, Kay-Shuttleworth actually controlled
the oversight of public education in England, The
Committee of the Privy Council on Education provided
departmental, bureaucratic responsibility for education.
The work of the inspectors provided evidence to justify
the further extension of state intervention.
In summary, although educational changes in
England were primarily a response to the practical
problems resulting from industrialization, politicians
such as Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell and civil
servants such as Kay-Shuttleworth, who had consciously
or unconsciously been exposed to Bentham's ideas,
increasingly framed their solutions to these problems to
conform to his teachings. The establishment and the
164
growth of the education department was but one part of
the Benthamite revolution which helped to create the
modern administrative state.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Part I: Primary Sources
A, Private Manuscript Collections
Bentham Papers. British Museum Add. MSS. 29806-29809, notes on natural and revealed religion, 1800-1821; 33544-33546, correspondence with James Mill, 1803-1827; 37949, letters to Francis Place, 1817-1831; 40391, 40393, 40400, correspondence with Sir Robert Peel, 1827-1830.
Bentham Collections. Watson Library of University College, London, boxes 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 18, 106, 107, 111, 137, 155, and 165.
Brougham Collections. Watson Library of University College, London.
Place Papers. British Museum Add. MSS. 27823, collections relating to schools, mechanics' institutions; account of Lancastrians, West London Lancastrian Association, Chrestomathic School, London Mechanics' Institution, papers relating to the University of London; 27824, papers, printed and :1SS., relating schools, etc.; 27826, notes on education, etc.; 27827, notes on improvement and education of the people; 35144, 35149, autobiography and letters; 35145-35148, memoranda on public affairs, social changes, public improvements in London, original letters of Bentham, James Mill, George Grote, William Godwin, J. Hume, 1771-1847; 35153, private letters chiefly with James Mill, Edward Wakefield, Thomas Hodgskin, 1817-1837; 35154, project for a Society for the Diffusion of Political and Moral Knowledge, 1832, 1833.
B. Government Publications
Great Britain. Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 1, IX (1807); 1, XXXIV (1816); 2, II (1820); 3, IX (1831); 3, XV (1833); 3, XVI (1833); 3, XVII
165
166
(1833); 3, XX (1833); 3, XXIV (1834); 3, XXVI (1835); 3, XXVII (1835); 3, XXIX (1835); 3, XXXVI (1837); 3, XXXVIII (1837); 3, XXXIX (1837); 3, XL (1837); 3, XLII (1838); 3, XLIII (1838); 3, XLIV (1838); 3, XLV (1839); 3, XLVII (1839); 3, XLVIII (1839); 3, L (1839),
"The Select Committee on the Education of the Lower Orders of the Metropolis (1816)," Parliamentary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1968), Education of Poorer Classes, I,
"The Select Committee on the Education of the Lower Orders (1816-1818)," Parliamentary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1969), Education of Poorer Classes, II.
"The Select Committee on the State of Education (1834)," Parliamentary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1970), Education of Poorer Classes, VI,
"The Select Committee on the Education of the "Poorer Classes in England and Wales (1835)," Parliamentary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1970) , Education of Poorer Classes, VI.
"Reports, Papers and Correspondence Relating to the Commission on Popular Education in England, 1861-6 2," Parliamentary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1969), Education General, VIII.
"The Select Committee on the Poor Law Amendment "Act (1838)," Parliamentary Papers (Irish University Press Series, 1969), Poor Law, III.
C. Public Documents, Printed (PRO)
Minutes of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education, 1839-1840. Public Record Office, Education, 17/1/2644.
D. Contemporary Works: Books, Pamphlets, Articles, and Newspapers
Allen, William. Life of William Allen with Selections from his Correspondence. 2 Vols. Philadelphia: H. Longstreth, 1847.
167
— .' ^' Education Speeches and Observations of Lord Brougham, the Marquis of; LansdowneT^nd" LQ^^ Lyndhurst iri th£ House of Lords ,~uni'T9, 1_8_3_7. London: Darton and Harvey, 1837.
Bain, Alexander. James Mill: A Biography, 1882, Reprinted ed. New York: A. M. Kelley, 1967,
Blackstone, William, Commentaries on the Laws of England. 1765. 4 Vols. London: Dawson of Pall Mall, 1966. '
Bentham, Jeremy. Works. 11 Vols. Ed. by John Bowring, 1843, Reprinted ed. New York: Russell and Russell, 1962,
•_ The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, Ed. by Timothy L. S. Spriggs. 2 Vols. London: Athlone Press, 1968.
. Bentham's Handbook of Political Fallacies. Revised and edited by Harold A. Larrabee. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 19 52.
. The Theory of Legislation. Ed. by C. K. Ogden. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 19 31.
A Bentham Reader. Ed. by Mary Peter Mack. New York: Pegasus, 19 69.
. Bentham's Political Thought. Ed. by Bhikhu Parekh. London: Croom Helm, 1973.
Brougham, Henry. A Letter on National Education to the Duke of Bedford. Edinburgh: A & C BlackT~1839.
. A Letter to Sir Samuel Romilly upon the Abuse of_ Charities. London: Longman & Co., 1818.
The Life and Times of Henry Lord Brougham. "3 Vols. New York: Harper, 1871-72.
Practical Observations upon the Education of "the People, Addressed to the Working Classes and their Employees. 6th ed. London: Longman & Co., 1825.
Speeches. 3 Vols. Edinburgh: A & C Black, "1838,
168
Bulwer, Edward Lytton, England and the English, 1833, New ed, by Standish Meacham, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970,
The Central Society of Education. Strictures on the Publications of the Central Society of Education. London: Thomas Wars, 18 37.
. The First, Second, Third Publications of the Central Society of Education. London: Taylor and Walton, 1837-1839,
Colquhoun, J, C, National Education: The Present State of the Question Elucidated. London: Levey, Robson, & Franklyn, 1839.
Colquhoun, Patrick. A Treatise on Indigence; Exhibiting — General View of the National Resources for Productive Labour; with Propositions for Ameliorating the Condition of the Poor, and Improving the Moral Habits and Increasing the Comforts of the Labouring People . . . , London: J. Hatchard, 1806,
Foster, John, "Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance," Edinburgh Review, XXXIV (August 1820), 214-254,
Greg, Samuel. Report of a Committee of the Manchester Statistical Society on the State of Education in the Borough of Salford in 1835. London: James Ridgway, 1836.
Greville, Charles C. The Greville Diary. Ed. by Philip Whitwell Wilson. 2 Vols. London: Heinemann, 1927.
The Greville Memoirs, 1814-1860. Ed. by Lytton Strachey and Roger Fulford. London: Macmillan, 1938.
Hamilton, William, "Addenda ad Corpus Statutorum Universitatis Oxoniensis," Edinburgh Review, LIII (June 1831), 384-427,
Kay-Shuttleworth, James. The Autobiography. Ed. by B. C. Bloomfield. London: University of London Press, 1964.
The Moral and Physical Condition of the Working ""Claide's Employed in the Cotton Manufacture in Manchester. 1832. 2nd ed. enl. London: Frank Cass, 1970
169
__: Recent Measures for the Promotion of Education in England. London: Ridgway, Picadilly, 1839.
_• Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth on Popular Education Ed. by Trygve R. Tholfson. New York: Teachers College Press, 1974.
Malthus, Thomas Robert. Additions to An Essay on the Principle of Population, etc. London: Murray, 1817.
Mill, James. "Edinburgh Review," Westminster Review, I (January 1824), 206ff.
Mill, John Stuart. Autobiography. 1873. New York: Columbia University Press, 1944.
"On Bentham (1838)," Jeremy Bentham: Ten Critical Essays. Ed. by Bhikhu Parekh. London: Frank Cass, 1974. Pp. 1-37.
Place, Francis. Autobiography. Ed. by Mary Thale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19 72.
Roebuck, John A. Life and Letters of J. A. Roebuck. Ed. by R. E. Leader. London: E. Arnold, 189 7.
Romilly, Samuel. Memoirs. Ed. by his Sons. 3 Vols. London: 1840.
Russell, Lord John. Memoirs, Journals, and Correspondence, 8 Vols. London: Longmans, Green, 1853-56.
. Recollections and Suggestions, 1813-1873. London: 1875.
. Some Further Thoughts on National Education for the United Kingdom. London: 1875.
Smith, Adam. An. Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 1805. Reprinted from the 6th ed. 2 Vols. London: G. Bell, 1887.
Wilberforce, Robert Isaac. A Second Letter to the Most Noble the Marquis of Lansdowne, on the System of Inspection Best Adapted for National Education. London: J. Hatchard & Son, 1840.
Anonymous. "Mr. Brougham—Education Committee," Quarterly Review, XIX (April & July 1818), 493-569.
170
The Times. February 9, June 6, June 9, and June 11, 1825.
Part II: Secondary Materials
A. Books
Adams, Don, ed. Education in National Development. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 19 71.
Adamson, John William. English Education, 1789-1902. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19 30.
Albee, Ernest. A History of English Utilitarianism. London: Allen and Unwin, 19 57.
Altick, Richard D. Victorian People and Ideas. New York: Norton, 1973.
Armytage, V7. H. G. Four Hundred Years of English Education 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Ashton, T. S. Economic and Social Investigations in Manchester, 1833-1933: A Century History of the Manchester Statistical Society. London: Oxford University Press, 19 34.
Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830. London: Oxford University Press, 1948.
Atkinson, Charles M. Jeremy Bentham, his Life and Work. New ed. Westport: Greenwood Press, 19 70.
Ball, Nancy. Her Majesty's Inspectorate, 1839-1849. Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press, 1963.
Barker, Ernest. Principles of Social and Political Theory. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1952.
Barnard, Howard Clive. A Short History of British Education, 1760-1944. London: University of London Press, 1947.
Batterberry, R. P. J. Sir Thomas Wyse, 1791-1862. Dublin University of Dublin Press, 1939.
Baumgardt, David. Bentham and the Ethics of Today. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952.
171
Bellot, H, Hale. History of University College, London, 1826-1926. London: University of London Press, 1929,
Benn, Alfred William. The History of English Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century. 2 Vols. New York: Longmans, Green, 1906.
Bishop, A. S. The Rise of a Central Authority for British Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.
Bowie, John. Politics and Opinion in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Psess, 1954.
Briggs, Asa. The Age of Improvement. London: Longmans, Green, 1959.
Burns, James H. Jeremy Bentham and the University College. London: Athlone Press, 1962.
Burston, W. H., ed. James Mill on Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
. James Mill on Philosophy and Education. London: Athlone Press, 1973-
Cassirer, Ernst. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951.
Cavenagh, F. A. James and John Stuart Mill on Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19 31.
Curtis, Stanley James. History of Education in Great Britain. 6th ed. London: University Tutorial Press, 1965.
Davidson, W. L. Political Thought in England: The Utilitarians from Bentham to Mill. London: Oxford University Press, 1947.
Davies, H. W. C. The Age of Grey and Peel. London: Oxford University Press, 1964.
De Montmorency, J. E. G. State Intervention in English Education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902.
Dent, H. C. Education in Great Britain. 4th ed. London Oxford University Press, 1964.
172
. The Educational System of England and Wales. 4th ed. London: University of London Press, 1969.
Dicey, A. V.^ Lectures upon the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century. 1905. 2nd ed. Reprinted. London: Macmillan, 1952.
Driver, Cecil H. Tory Radical: The Life of Richard Oastler. New York: Oxford University Press, 19 46.
Edmonds, E. L. The School Inspector. 1962.
Elliott, W. Y. The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics. N York: Howard Fertig, 196 8.
ew
Felling, K. G. The Second Tory Party, 1714-1832. London: Macmillan, 1959.
Finer, Samuel Edward. Life and Times of Sir Edwin Chadwick. London: Macmillan, 1952.
Eraser, Derek. The Evolution of the Welfare State. London: Macmillan, 19 73.
Fulford, Roger. Samuel Whitbread, 1764-1815: A Study in Opposition. London: Macmillan, 19 67.
Garratt, Geoffrey Theodore. Lord Brougham. London: Macmillan, 19 35.
Gosden, P. H. J. H. The Development of Educational Administration in England and Wales. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966.
Halevy, Elie. The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism. Trans, by Mary Morris. London: Faber & Faber, 1928.
A History of the English People in the Nineteenth Century. Trans, by E. I. Watkin and D. A. Barker. 6 Vols. New York: Peter Smith, 1942-52.
Thomas Hodgiskin. Ed. and trans, by A. J. Taylor. London: E. Benn, 1956.
Harrison, John Fletcher Clews. Learning and Living, 1790-1960: A Study in the History of the English Adult Education Movement. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1961.
173
Hawes, Frances. Henry Brougham. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1956.
Henriques, Ursula. Religious Toleration in England, 1787-1833. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961.
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. Victorian Minds: A Study of Intellectuals in Crisis and of Ideologies in Transition. New York: Harper and Row, 19 52.
Hurt, John. Education in Evolution: Church, State, Society, and Popular Education, 1800-1870. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 19 71.
Jackson, B. and D. Marsden. Education and the Working Classes. London: Pergamon, 1966.
Jennings, H. G. The Political Theory of State-Supported Elementary Education in England, 1750-1833. Lancaster, Pa.: Lancaster Press, 1928.
Judges, A. V., ed. Pioneers in English Education. London: Faber & Faber, 1952.
Kelley, Thomas. George Birkbeck, Pioneer of Adult Education. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1957.
Letwin, S. R. The Pursuit of Certainty: David Hume, Jeremy Bentham, J. S_. Mill, Beatrice Webb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965.
Lewis, R. A. Edwin Chadwick and the Public Health Movement. 1832-1854. London: Longmans, Green, 1952.
Lovell, C. R. English Constitutional and Legal History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962.
Lubbenow, William. The Politics of Government Growth: Early Victorian Attitudes toward State Intervention, 1833-1848. Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 19 71.
Lyons, David. In. the Interest of the Governed: A Study in Bentham's Philosophy of Utility and Law. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
Maccoby, Simon. English Radicalism. 5 Vols. London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1935-55. Vol. II.
Mack, Mary Peter. Jeremy Bentham, an Odyssey of Ideas, 1748-1792. London: Heinemann, 1962.
174
MacDonagh, Oliver. A Pattern of Government Growth, 1800-1.860_: The Passenger Acts and their Enforcement. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 19 61.
McGilchrist, John. The Life and Career of Henry Lord Brougham and Extracts from his Speeches and Notices of his Contemporaries. London: Petter & Galpin, 1868.
MacLure, J. S. Educational Documents: England and Wales, 1816-1967. 2nd ed. London: Chapman and Hall, 1968.
Maltby, S. E. Manchester and the Movement for National Elementary Education. Manchester: "Manchester University Press, 1918.
Manning, David John. The Mind of Jeremy Bentham. New York: Barnes and Noble, 196 8.
Marshall, James. Swords and Symbols: The Technique of Sovereignty. Revised ed. New York: Funk and" Wagnalls, 19 69.
Mathias, Peter, ed. Science and Society, 1600-1900. Cmabridge: Cambridge University Press, 19 72.
Midwinter, Eric. Nineteenth Century Education. New York: Harper & Row, 19 70.
. Victorian Social Reform. New York: Harper & Row, 196 8.
Morley, J. The Struggle for National Education. London: Chapman and Hall, 1873.
Morrish, Ivor. Education since 1800. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1970.
Murphy, James. Church, State, and Schools in Britain, 1800-1970. London: Routledge and Kegan Pual, 1971.
. The Religious Problem in English Education: The Crucial Experiment. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1959.
Nesbitt, George Lyman. Benthamite Reviewing: the First Twelve Years of the Westminster Review, 1824-1836 New York: Columbia University Press, 1934.
175
New, Chester W. The Life of Henry Brougham to 1830. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 19 61.
Parekh, Bhikhu. Bentham's Political Thought. London: Croom Helm, 1973.
, ed. Jeremy Bentham: Ten Critical Essays. London: Frank Cass, 19 74.
Parris, Henry. Constitutional Bureaucracy: The Develop-" ent of British Central Administration since the Eighteenth Century. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969.
Perkin, Harold. The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780-1880. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969.
Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 19 44.
Pollard, Hugh. Pioneers of Popular Education, 1760-1850. London: Murray, 19 56.
Poynter, John R. Society and Pauperism: English Ideas on Poor Relief, 1795-1834. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969.
Prest, John. Lord John Russell. London: Macmillan, 19 72.
Roberts, David. The Victorian Origins of the Welfare State. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961.
Robbins, Lionel. The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy. London: Macmillan, 1950.
Saffin, N. W. Science, Religion and Education in Britain, 1804-1904. Portland, Ore.: International Scholarly Book Services, 19 73.
Salmon, D., ed. The Practical Parts of Lancaster's Improvement and Bell's Experime'nFI Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932.
Simon, Brian. Studies in the History of Education, 1780-1870. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1960.
Smith, Frank. The Life and Work of Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth. London: John Murray, 19 23.
176
Stephen, Leslie. The English Utilitarians. 3 Vols. London: Duckworth, 190 0.
Stephen, Leslie and Sidney Lee, eds. Dictionary of National Biography. 25 Vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1917-1926.
Stokes, Eric. The English Utilitarians and India. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959.
Sutherland, Gilian. Elementary Education in the Nineteenth Century. London: Oxford University Press, 19 71.
, ed. Studies in the Growth of Nineteenth-Century Government. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971.
Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968.
Turberville, Arthur Stanley. The House of Lords in the Age of Reform, 1784-1839. London: Faber & Faber, 1958.
Vaughan, Michalina and Margaret Scotford Archer. Social Conflict and Educational Change in England and France, 1789-1848. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971.
Waldo, Dwight. The Administrative State. New York: Ronald Press, 1948.
Wallas, Graham. The Life of Francis Place, 1771-1854. 4th ed. London: George Allen and Unwin, 19 25.
Walpole, Spencer. The Life of Lord John Russell. 1889. New York: Haskell House, 1969.
Ward, John Trevor. The Factory Movement, 1830-1855. London: Macmillan, 196 2.
Webb, Beatrice. Our Partnership. Ed. by Barbara Drake and Margaret I. Cole. New York: Longmans, Green, 1948.
Woodward, Llewellyn. Age of Reform, 1815-1870. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.
177
B. Articles and Dissertations
Best, G. T. H. "The Religious Difference of National Education in England, 1800-1870," Cambridge Historical Journal, XII (]956), 155-173.
Brebner, J. B. "Laissez Faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth Century Britain," The Journal of Economic History, VIII (J948) , 59 T3"
Cromwell, Valerie. "Interpretations of Nineteenth-Century Administration: An Analysis," Victorian Studies, IX (March 1966), 245-255.
Ervine, St. John C. "Francis Place, the Tailor of Charing Cross," Fabian Tract, 165 (]9]2), 88-114.
Hans, N. "Bentham and the Utilitarians," Pioneers in English Education. Ed. by A. V. Judges. London: Faber & Faber, 1950. Pp. 83-103.
Hart, Jenifer. "Nineteenth-Century Social Reform: A Tory Interpretation of History," Past and Present, XXX (July 1965), 39-61.
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. "Bentham Scholarship and the Bentham 'Problem,'" Journal of Modern History, XLI (June 1969) , 189-206.
Hume, L. J. "Jeremy Bentham and the Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government," Historical Journal, X (1967), 361-375.
Johnson, Richard. "Educational Policy and Social Control in Early Victorian England," Past and Present, XLIX (November 1970), 96-119.
MacDonagh, Oliver, "The Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government: A Reappraisal," Historical Journal, (1958), 52-67.
MacRae, D. "Utilitarian Ethics and Social Change," Ethics, LXXVIII (April 1968), 188-198.
Midwinter, Eric. "A Tory Interpretation of History: Some Comments," Past and Present, XXXIV (July 1966), 130-133.
Parris, Henry. "The Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government: A Reappraisal Reappraised," Historical Journal, III (1960), 17-37.
178
Pratt, R. Crawford. "The Benthamite Theory of Democracy," The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXI (February 1955), 20-29.
Roberts, David. "Jeremy Bentham and the Victorian Administrative State," Victorian Studies, II (March 1959), 193-210.
Sartorius, R. "Utilitarianism and Obligation," Journal of Philosophy, LXVI (Fall, 1969), 67-81.
Sutherland, Gilian. "Recent Trends in Administrative History," Victorian Studies, XIII (1970), 408-411.
Piatt, Franklin Dewitt. "The English Parliamentary Radicals—Their Collective Character, Their Failure to Become a Party, and Their Failure to Find a Leader: A Study in the Psycho-Sociological Sources of Radical Behavior, 1833-46," a Ph.D. Dissertation at the Washington University (St. Louis), 1969.
TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY The Graduate School
LUBBOCK, TEXAS
ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION
for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Author's Full Name: Sun Hong Choy
Title of Dissertation: The Benthamite Movement for National Education: Its Impact on the Creation of the Education Department in England, 1807-1839
Names of Committee Members: Dr. Brian L. Blakeley, Dr. Jacquelin Collins, Dr. Key
Ray Chong, Dr. Otto M. Nelson, Dr. Benjamin H. Newcomb, Dr. William E. Oden
Department: History
Date of Graduation: December, 1975
Signature of Committee Chairman
Signature of Graduate Dean
The extent of the Benthamite influence on nine
teenth century legislative, administrative, and political
reform has been a topic arousing considerable controversy
among recent administrative historians. To resolve this
controversy it is necessary to study specific aspects of
the so-called "nineteenth century revolution in government,"
a concept popularized by Oliver MacDonagh. This study, the
impact of Benthamite ideas on English educational reform
between 1807 and 1839, although important in itself, seeks
also to answer some of the questions surrounding the gen
eral development of the modern administrative state in
England.
Although it is difficult to determine accurately
the influence of Benthamite ideas on educational reform,
some qualified conclusions are possible. Bentham's admin
istrative and educational ideas were not openly accepted
by most influential politicians in the early nineteenth
century. During this period of repression, these ideas
were seen as similar to the dangerous rationalism of the
French Revolution. In addition, Benthamism was identified
as an attack on religion, specifically on the Church of
England. Despite this apparent absence of enthusiasm for
Bentham's ideas, Benthamism did permeate, in a Fabian
fashion, the consciousness of leading politicians such as
Brougham, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord John Russell by various
means. By mid-century Bentham's assumptions on the role
of government in society were so widespread that it was
no longer possible to discern a definite Benthamite fac
tion as had been the case in the 1820s and earlier.
This permeation process in the case of educational
reform proceeded in several stages. At first the belief
in a national, non-sectarian system of education was shared
only by Bentham and a few close followers. By the 1820s,
however, it was possible for a definite "Benthamite" group
3
of reformers to experiment in using these ideas to solve
practical problems, as was shown in the cases of the West
London Lancastrian Association, the Chrestomathic School
plan, the London Mechanics' Institute, and London Univer
sity. By the 1830s the conviction that government had a
responsibility for providing education had penetrated
Parliament through the efforts of Roebuck, Warburton,
Thomas Wyse, and Kay-Shuttleworth. The final stage in the
process was the conquest of the bureaucracy itself, with a
Benthamite coming to control the newly established Com
mittee on Education of the Privy Council, which provided
departmental, administrative responsibility for education.
Although educational reform in England was primarily a
response to practical difficulties, politicians and civil
servants, who had consciously or unconsciously been exposed
to Bentham's ideas, increasingly framed their solutions to
conform to his teachings.
