which the spirit of lawlessness received, and its ultimate suppression, were owing to the early dissemination of religious and moral principles among the people. With a view to this inquiry, a circular was addressed to such individuals, both laymen and clergymen, within the disturbed districts, as from their position and opportunities were considered likely to afford correct and full information. The answers received amounted to about one hundred and fifty, all from different writers, and all tending to establish the same conclusion. It appeared, that in every case the effect of education, whether in Sunday or Dailyschools, was salutary in proportion to its completeness. Wherever means of Church-instruction were best provided, there the efforts of the disaffected were least successful. In whatever districts Church principles prevailed, no outbreak took place, however grievous the privations of the people, except in cases where the rightly-disposed inhabitants were overpowered by agitators from a distance. One correspondent states, that the place he writes from had been proverbially one of the most, if not the most, disorderly and uncivilised of the manufacturing districts; that now, however, his church was well attended; that his schools contained three hundred and seventy-six scholars; and that during the recent disturbances, the people, though in great distress, had been peaceable, and had shown no disposition to join the rioters who came amongst them, a circumstance which the respectable portion of the inhabitants were convinced would not have taken place in former times. Another correspondent states, that the disturbances had not hitherto reached his own nor the adjoining district; and attributes the peace and quiet enjoyed in both villages to the churches and Church-schools recently established therein, and at that time happily in full operation. A third writer, from nearly the central point of agitation, affirms of his own knowledge the striking fact, that

amongst the rioters no individual in full communion with his church was to be found, and scarce a youth accustomed to attend a Church Sunday-school. The same fact is particularly referred to by the incumbent of the district where the disturbances originated, who declares, that, as far as his observation extended, not one Churchman had taken part in the turn-out, or had been concerned in any unlawful proceedings in the neighbourhood at any time. Other correspondents confirm this important statement. One declares, that although the turn-out was commenced a few miles from him, not a single Churchman had taken an active part in promoting it; and that to keep his people, if possible, from the various meetings, he had service in the church twice in the week during the period of greatest excitement. Another writes, that not one parent of his Church Sunday-scholars (amounting to seven hundred) took any part in, or was present at, any of the tumultuous meetings which had been held in his parish and township. Another expresses his belief, that among those who were brought within the instruction of the Church, there were not to be found any who, during the late disturbances, had endangered the peace of the country, or had not been found ready to maintain it.

A magistrate of Lancashire states, that during the riots he called a public meeting, to take into consideration the best plan for preserving the public peace. The Church people universally attended, and cheerfully enrolled themselves as special constables. Nothing could induce the teachers of Church Sunday-schools to attend any of the seditious meetings; on the contrary, they to a man enrolled themselves as constables, kept entirely aloof from agitation, and waited patiently for the improvement of trade. A gentleman, who describes himself as having a general and uninterrupted acquaintance of nine years' standing with almost all the manufac

turing districts in Yorkshire, and a small portion of those in Lancashire, affirms, that amongst the various outbreaks and other acts of political insubordination which it had been his lot to witness, he had never known a regular attendant on the services of the Church to be directly or indirectly concerned, with the solitary exception of a man whose sanity had been in question. An active clergyman writes, that by means of four Sunday and two week-day services in different parts of his chapelry, he maintained a thorough and complete Church of England ascendancy throughout the district; that during the late depression in trade, the people bore their privations in a manner highly creditable to their principles and profession; that while many of them had not been able to earn more than eight or nine shillings a week each for the support of a family of as many persons, he had never witnessed any thing in the shape of disaffection to their employers, or impatience at their

lot; and that, as for insubordination, or union with the insubordinate, such an idea seems not to have entered into their minds. Other letters state, that the late disturbances would not have occurred had the spiritual wants of the population been previously attended to;-or that such disturbances will occur again and again, perhaps annually, until further and even expensive measures for the religious benefit of the poor be applied; ;-or that the rioters in the late outbreak were not Churchmen, as might be proved by an inquiry through the chaplain of the county jail ; or that not one parent of a scholar belonging to the Church-schools took part with the disaffected; or that those trained up in Church-schools, by their adherence to their country's laws and institutions, stopped the torrent of disorder;—or that none of those who had belonged to the National School joined in or approved of the late agitation, although nearly all of them worked in factories, and were suffering many privations; or that, among the

youthful mob, not one pupil out of twelve hundred belonging to the National Schools could be discovered, although the attention of the teachers had been specially directed to the subject. "With much

satisfaction and gratitude to God I can state," writes a clergyman, from one of the most disturbed parishes in Yorkshire," that not one of my hearers, nor one youth who has been in our Sunday-school, was implicated in the riots, or joined the rioters."-From the Thirty-second Report of the National Society.

EFFECT OF THE WANT OF CHURCH-SCHOOLS AND CHURCH-TEACHING.

THE picture drawn by other writers, describing parts where Church-influence was weak and education neglected, is not less practically instructive. It is stated that the lawless proceedings at

were

easily accounted for by the fact of five or six thousand souls being suffered to remain in a state of heathenish ignorance, without a single school which offered an education worthy of the name ;—that at

there is not a day nor Sunday-school in connexion with the Church, and that, consequently, the peace of the county-town was more threatened from that quarter than from any other ;-that the district of -, containing ten thousand persons, with no daily school for the children of the poor, had attained an unhappy notoriety for rudeness, violence, and insubordination, insomuch that, during the recent insurrection, injury to person and property was only prevented by the authorities yielding to the will of the insurgents;-that in the young men

from fourteen or fifteen to twenty-one or twenty-two years of age, having had no means of instruction but in Sunday-schools, where a great portion of the day is spent in purely secular teaching, are almost universally vicious in their habits, undutiful to their parents, disrespectful to their superiors, without any

just ideas of the relative duties of their situation in life;-that the town of -, having only one church, with eight hundred sittings, for fourteen thousand inhabitants, was overrun with Chartism and disaffection, and actually contained a so-called Sunday-school, in which three hundred poor children were initiated into infidel and seditious principles. A correspondent mentions, that in consequence of church-room being only provided for between three and four thousand out of thirty thousand, and no schools to train up the rising generation, the ignorant populace became the followers of every blasphemous and extravagant sect, vice and infidelity most fearfully abounded, and eleven hundred heads of families in one place, and two hundred in another, were ascertained by statistical inquiry to profess no religion. And, to give one more example, an active clergyman in Lancashire describes an out-lying township of fifteen hundred souls, for which he had for some time been vainly endeavouring to provide a school, as being addicted, more than any neighbouring district, to political disaffection and open infidelity. "The soil of

says he, "was well prepared for the seeds which revolutionists and infidels would scatter, and accordingly they have taken deep root." "The work," he continues, "of undoing all these evil consequences of neglect must be arduous—we expect it to be so. We feel it so at present. May God give us a spirit of patience and perseverance! Our chief hope must be with the young.'

The passages here quoted exhibit fearfully, and but too faithfully, the deplorable results of spiritual and educational destitution. Perhaps no terms can more correctly and eloquently pourtray the evils to be apprehended, as well as those now existing, than the language of a reverend correspondent, in the very centre of the recent outbreak. "Bad," he says, as matters are at present, worse may be expected, if active steps are not taken; for most of the present

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