Lord Ashley’s speech on the failure of the education proposals in Sir James Graham's Factory Bill, 19 June 1843

(Parliamentary Debates, 3, LXX, pp. 94-95; in G. M. Young and W. D. Hancock, eds., English Historical Documents, XII(1), 1833-1874 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 865-66; Sir Graham’s governance proposals for state support of education under the Factory Acts ensured that the schools would be dominated by the Established Church. Despite his subsequent effort to placate Dissent by amending the bill, the provisions were dropped from the Factory Act of 1843. Lord Ashley, a leading Evangelical and proponent of legislation to protect factory children, expressed his regret that sectarian differences had scuttled progress in the effort to provide state support for the education of the poor.)

Lord Ashley said, although he deeply regretted the loss of the educational clauses, he, for the sake of the rest of the bill, approved of the resolution the Government had come to. Even had it been possible for the Government to have carried the measure in that House, he did not think it would have met with that cordial sympathy and co-operation from the different classes affected by it, without which it could not have been effectually carried out. It should be borne in mind, that the Church, with a view to conciliation, were ready to make the very largest concessions, larger certainly than it had ever made before, but concessions made in the hope of conciliation and peace. But when the Church found that the terms which it proposed, so far from leading to conciliation and peace, only led to greater disunion and almost to effectual war, it had no alternative but to stop, at all events, at the point to which it had already advanced. Somewhere or other, however, a very great and deep responsibility did lie; it was not for him to point out who were the parties really responsible for the position at which they had now arrived. He certainly must say that the Government had shown their readiness to act. He saw the Church prepared to make concessions for the sake of conciliation and peace, and on the other hand he saw the great body of Dissenters rejoicing that they had been successful in their efforts to defeat the measure. Where-ever the fault lay one thing was quite clear -that the really suffering parties were the vast body of neglected children, who, as present appearances went, were now consigned to an eternity of ignorance. While he deplored the result to which the measure had come, he must be allowed to express his satisfaction at the manner in which it had been received and entertained in the first instance, and at the absence of all violence with which it had been received by the Dissenters in that House. That reception did certainly afford some ground for hoping that hereafter something might effectually be done to arrest the further progress of vice, ignorance, and immorality in the country by means of some system of education. At present, however, it appeared that if united education were to become hereafter possible, the question was at present involved in the greatest difficulty, and it was one that had already produced the greatest agitation in the country. He for one, therefore, was prepared to say that unless a very mighty change should take place in the mutual temper of both parties, he would never be a party to any system, the object of which was, by mutual concession, to bring antagonist parties to act together in the same general plan. Once more, he desired to express his gratitude for the manner in which the proposition had been first received, and since entertained, and also to state his cordial hope and prayer that the time was not far distant when some means might be discovered whereby the men and women of this country in future generations might be put into that state which would fit them to be good subjects, and above all Christians, and extend to them the fruits of a religious education, by preparing them to share in a blessed immortality.