750 
LAISSEZ FAIRE 
A.D. 1776 
—1850, 
were unsuited to the wants of the new era. Apprenticeship 
had offered a system of training, not only in the skill of a 
craft, but for the duties of life in a particular calling and a 
by pro- definite social status. There was need to substitute some 
means of © System, which should be adapted for the wider prospects 
«ducation, which were opening up, and which should treat each child as 
a unit in the State. It was possible for the manufacturers to 
urge that the discontent, and still more the violence, of the 
operatives was due to their ignorance, and that education 
was the means which would enable them to act not from 
short-sighted passion, but from an enlightened self-interest. 
The education of the poor thus came to be undertaken on 
a large scale, partly out of charity’ and partly as a work 
to which the governing classes applied themselves in mere 
self-defence. 
The philanthropists could not count, however, on the 
interested support of manufacturers, when they turned their 
attention to the conditions under which the great staple 
industries of the country were carried on; and the best 
scientific opinion of the day was inclined to condemn any 
interference by the State, as useless when it was not mis- 
chievous. Economic experts were on the whole opposed to 
the protective legislation which was brought forward in the 
interests of women and children. They had foretold the ruin 
1 Godwin had been one of the most effective advocates of the diffusion of 
education, from the desire of letting the poor see where their true interest 
lay (Political Justice, 1. 44). The earliest efforts of Government were deli- 
berately confined to supplementing voluntary agency, and any other course 
appeared to them injurious. “In humbly suggesting what is fit to be done for 
promoting universal education, your Committee do not hesitate to state that two 
different plans are advisable, adapted to the opposite circamstances of the town 
and country districts. Wherever the efforts of individuals can support the 
requisite number of schools, it would be unnecessary and injurious to interpose 
any parliamentary assistance. But your Committee have clearly ascertained, 
that in many places private subscriptions could be raised to meet the yearly 
expenses of a school, while the original cost of the undertaking, occasioned chiefly 
by the erection and purchase of the schoel-house, prevents it from being 
attempted. Your Committee conceive that a sum of money might be well 
employed in supplying this first want, leaving the charity of individuals to 
furnish the annual provision requisite for continuing the school” (Third Report 
of Select Committee on the Education of the Lower Orders, in Reports, 1818, 
iv. 59). In accordance with these views Lord Althorp succeeded in 1833 in 
obtaining some grants to defray the first cost of elementary schools. The work 
of adult education which was being vigorously carried on in Mechanics’ Institutes, 
though begun somewhat earlier, received a new impulse at this time.