between him and what he aims at.  The principle is just as good for one class as another, and it is only by applying it impartially that you save its application from being insolent and invidious....  You propose to make old Diggs’ boys instruct themselves before they go bird-scaring or sheep-tending.  I want to know what you do to make those three worthies in that justice-room instruct themselves before they may go acting as magistrates and judges?”

The imaginary Arnold replies that Lord Lumpington was at Eton, and Mr. Hittall at Charterhouse, and Mr. Bottles at Lycurgus House Academy, Peckham.  But Arminius insists that to send boys of the wealthy classes to school is nothing—­the natural course of things takes them there.  “Don’t suppose that, by doing this, you are applying the principle of Compulsory Education fairly, and as you apply it to Diggs’ boys.  You are not interposing, for the rich, education as a bar or condition between them and what they aim at.

“In my country,” he went on, “we should have begun to put a pressure on those future magistrates at school.  Before we allowed Lord Lumpington and Mr. Hittall to go to the University at all, we should have examined them....  There would have been some Mr. Grote as School Board Commissary, pitching into them questions about history, and some Mr. Lowe, as Crown Patronage Commissary, pitching into them questions about English literature; and these young men would have been kept from the University, as Diggs’ boys are kept from their bird-scaring, till they had instructed themselves.  Then, if, after three years of their University, they wanted to be magistrates, another pressure!—­a great Civil Service Examination before a Board of Experts, an examination in English law, Roman law, English history, history of jurisprudence.”

“A most abominable liberty to take with Lumpington and Hittall,” says Arnold.

“Then your compulsory education is a most abominable liberty to take with Diggs’ boys,” retorted Arminius....  “Oh, but,” I answered, “to live at all, even at the lowest stage of human life, a man needs instruction.”  “Well,” returns Arminius, “and to administer at all, even at the lowest stage of public administration, a man needs instruction.”

“We have never found it so,” I said.

The same argument was urged, in a graver fashion, in Schools and Universities of the Continent.

“In the view of the English friends of compulsory education, the educated and intelligent Middle and Upper Classes amongst us are to confer the boon of compulsory education upon the ignorant lower class, which needs it while they do not.  But, on the Continent, instruction is obligatory for Lower, Middle, and Upper Class alike.  I doubt whether our educated and intelligent classes are at all prepared for this.  I have an acquaintance in easy circumstances, of distinguished connexions, living in a fashionable part of London, who, like many other people, deals rather easily with