Let us turn from the physical to the mental state of the workers.  Since the bourgeoisie vouchsafes them only so much of life as is absolutely necessary, we need not wonder that it bestows upon them only so much education as lies in the interest of the bourgeoisie; and that, in truth, is not much.  The means of education in England are restricted out of all proportion to the population.  The few day schools at the command of the working-class are available only for the smallest minority, and are bad besides.  The teachers, worn-out workers, and other unsuitable persons who only turn to teaching in order to live, are usually without the indispensable elementary knowledge, without the moral discipline so needful for the teacher, and relieved of all public supervision.  Here, too, free competition rules, and, as usual, the rich profit by it, and the poor, for whom competition is not free, who have not the knowledge needed to enable them to form a correct judgment, have the evil consequences to bear.  Compulsory school attendance does not exist.  In the mills it is, as we shall see, purely nominal; and when in the session of 1843 the Ministry was disposed to make this nominal compulsion effective, the manufacturing bourgeoisie opposed the measure with all its might, though the working-class was outspokenly in favour of compulsory school attendance.  Moreover, a mass of children work the whole week through in the mills or at home, and therefore cannot attend school.  The evening schools, supposed to be attended by children who are employed during the day, are almost abandoned or attended without benefit.  It is asking too much, that young workers who have been using themselves up twelve hours in the day, should go to school from eight to ten at night.  And those who try it usually fall asleep, as is testified by hundreds of witnesses in the Children’s Employment Commission’s Report.  Sunday schools have been founded, it is true, but they, too, are most scantily supplied with teachers, and can be of use to those only who have already learnt something in the day schools.  The interval from one Sunday to the next is too long for an ignorant child to remember in the second sitting what it learned in the first, a week before.  The Children’s Employment Commission’s Report furnishes a hundred proofs, and the Commission itself most emphatically expresses the opinion, that neither the week-day nor the Sunday schools, in the least degree, meet the needs of the nation.  This report gives evidence of ignorance in the working-class of England, such as could hardly be expected in Spain or Italy.  It cannot be otherwise; the bourgeoisie has little to hope, and much to fear, from the education of the working-class.  The Ministry, in its whole enormous budget of 55,000,000 pounds, has only the single trifling item of 40,000 pounds for public education, and, but for the fanaticism of the religious sects which does at least as much harm as good, the means