itself: but it would be gradually accumulating means of instruction and amusement, and in devising sources of refined enjoyment to which the millions are strangers: it would be industriously employed in politically, intellectually and morally training fathers, mothers and children to know their rights and perform their duties: and with a people so trained, exclusive power, corruption and injustice would soon cease to have an existence."[1] He repudiates the notion that he agrees with those who say the people are too ignorant to be entrusted with the franchise. The franchise, in fact, would be the best means of education. Nevertheless an unenlightened electorate would never realise the full social consequences of its enfranchisement without education, which is, therefore, necessary to ensure complete freedom.[2] Lovett's thesis is this: the people ought to share completely in making the laws by which they are governed. They have even the right to use force to recover the liberties of which they have been deprived by force, but unless they are educated they will never realise the benefits which they seek to extort by their valour. By education and organisation they will become possessed of a moral force which no exclusive governing body can resist, and by their enlightenment they will use to the fullest extent and to the best effect the liberties they have won.
After a short dissertation upon the enfranchisement of women, a doctrine of which Lovett and some of his followers remained convinced champions,[3] Lovett plunges with evident satisfaction (for he was a born pedagogue) into a description of the kind of education he will have in his schools. It is crammed with knowledge and ideas. Lovett read nearly all the important English books on education and such of the German writers as were accessible in translations; Combe, Pestalozzi, Wilderspin, Hodgskin, Dr. Southwood Smith all appear in the footnotes. Every aspect of education is treated, and much emphasis is laid upon the importance of hygiene, physical training, playgrounds, and gardens, as might be expected in the days of the Public Health Agitation. This little book may well be recommended to all students of English education. Hatred of State control of education, belief in the Lancasterian organisation, and thoroughgoing secularism are other features of the scheme.[4]
Such was the scheme on which Place's opinion was
