securing to them the supreme blessing of Christian knowledge, the guardians of public education mus? conscientiously discharge this most important and indispensable duty to their country. The thirst for knowledge must be guided to the purest springs. The inquirer may fall into dangerous paths, and there are not wanting those who lie in wait to deceive the unwary, and employ their utmost skill to pollute the channel of public instruction. The wide spread of national education roused the enemies of religion and order to the most active endeavours to mislead the rising generation. Works of the most specious and attractive form were disseminated throughout the kingdom with a zeal worthy of a better cause, and with a success which made many good men hesitate as to the expediency of promoting a system, which they conceived to be fraught with so much danger. But those who were disposed to surrender the advantages of popular instruction, little considered that it was no longer in their power to arrest its progress. The people of England were athirst for knowledge. The spirit of free inquiry was abroad, and to suspend the teaching of the poor was to withhold the antidote when the poison was already at work, and to abandon them to adversaries who profited of the occasion to sow discord among the patrons of these Institutions, some of whom by their lukewarmness, and others by their prejudices, did much injury to the cause they wished to serve. At a period when this alarm prevailed, and serious apprehensions were entertained lest such shortsighted policy might leave the labouring classes to seek instruction from those who were striving to corrupt them, the Editors of the following sheets put forth The Plain Englishman, a periodical work designed to supply them with useful information, in place of those infidel and disloyal publications which were then circulated through all parts of the kingdom. The essays here reprinted are a portion of the original articles contained in that work; and should the present volume be found acceptable to the public, it is intended to add a second volume of these extracts, containing papers of a more serious character;—and to continue the present publication, by other volumes, which will have for their object to diffuse, in a cheap and popular form, that intelligence which Englishmen, of every degree, ought to possess, on the Laws, the History, and the civil Institutions of this great country. We are not insensible to the honour of having led the way in a species of miscellaneous publication which is calculated to render very important service to our countrymen. The Plain Englishman was undertaken to establish sound moral and political opinions-to shew our high obligations to the great men who were the founders of our institutions, the patrons of our learning, and the guardians of our liberties; and to exhibit the progress of our national improvements under these eminent advantages. The work was carried on for three years, and has given example to nearly fifty periodical publications, now issuing from the press, which were commenced since our own. These, though varying in character and merit, are for the most part of a beneficial tendency; and we may therefore congratulate ourselves in having enlarged the boundaries of useful knowledge to a wide extent. E. H. L. |