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James StanfieldOn the important question of education,Richard Cobden rejected the principles of freetrade and limited government andcampaigned for the introduction of a nationalsystem of free secular schools funded throughlocal taxation.

Cobden regarded education as beingcritical for both democratic and industrialdevelopment and believed that education wasthe key to solving many of the problemsfacing the working population. By themid-1830s. Cobden had become convincedthat the voluntary system of education was nolonger sufficient and that, as a result, theEnglish people had become the leastinstructed of any Protestant community in theworld. He also became disillusioned with theidea of tying universal education to religiousmovements.

Therefore, following the abolition of theCorn Laws and hoping to build on the successof the Anti-Corn Law League, he lent hissupport to the Lancashire Public SchoolsAssociation which was set up in Manchesterin 1847 to promote the introduction of anational system of free secular schools. At itsannual meeting in January 1851 (themovement was renamed the National PublicSchool Association in 1850), Cobdenhighlighted his frustration with the lack ofprogress in education, saying that he had‘passed beyond the time in which I can offerany opposition to any scheme whatever whichproposes to give the mass of the people of thiscountry a better education than they nowreceive’. In a speech at the Mechanics Institutein Barnsley in October 1853, he declared: ‘I donot care whether instruction comes voluntaryor from an organised State education. I wanteducation’.

In particular, Cobden agreed with theScottish writer George Combe and favouredthe same system of free state schooling whichhad been introduced by Horace Mann inMassachusetts in the USA. This is despite thefact that Cobden himself acknowledged that,if you establish free state schools in everyparish, then you will ultimately close all ofthose fee-paying schools which currently servethe poor, resulting in a state-controlledmonopoly service.

Richard Cobden’s views did not escape theattention of those who continued to support

the voluntary principle and resist furthergovernment intervention. For example, in aletter to Cobden dated 30 April 1851, EdwardBaines (editor of the Leeds Mercury) arguedthat the only way in which the governmentcould legitimately promote education wouldbe by removing all taxes on knowledgeincluding excise duty on paper and stampduty on newspapers and periodicals. Bainesalso reminded Cobden of the enormousimprovements in education that had occurredand warned that it was not possible to ask thegovernment to do something without alsogiving it the power and authority to regulate.Therefore, as soon as schools started toreceive government grants, they wouldbecome dependent on the government, givingits inspectors arbitrary control over thenation’s schools. According to Baines, ‘anyman who lends himself to the support of sucha measure, will be a means of doing greatermischief to the people than even the repeal ofthe Corn Laws did good’!

In his 1851 publication Social Statistics,Herbert Spencer also referred to the childishimpatience of those who complained that thetransformation from general ignorance touniversal enlightenment had not beencompleted within a generation. Dissatisfiedwith the natural rate of progress he wascritical of those who were now prepared to useartificial means to remedy what theyconceived to be nature’s failures. Thefollowing brilliant analogy is then provided:

‘Did the reader ever watch a boy in the first heat ofa gardening fit? . . . Note chiefly, however, withwhat anxiety the growth of a few scrubby plants isregarded. Three or four times a day will the littleurchin rush out to look at them. How provokinglyslow their progress seems to him. When will theblossoms come out! For nearly a week has someforward bud been promising him the triumph of afirst flower, and still it remains closed. Surely theremust be something wrong! Perhaps the leaves havestuck fast. Ah! that is the reason, no doubt. And soten to one you shall some day catch our youngflorist very busily engaged in pulling open the calyx,and, it may be, trying to unfold a few of the petals.’

James Stanfield is based at the University ofNewcastle upon Tyne (j.stanfield@ncl.ac.uk).

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© 2011 The Author. Economic Affairs © 2011 Institute of Economic Affairs. Published by Blackwell Publishing, Oxford