persons employed in conducting the education of the young.

We will venture to say, that there is no class of men to whom a nation is so much indebted as to those employed in instructing the young: For if it be education that forms the only distinction between the civilized and the savage, much certainly is due to those who devote themselves to the office of instruction. It must be the duty therefore of every state to take care that proper encouragement be given to those who undertake this office. There ought to be such a salary as would render it an object of ambition to men of abilities and learning, or at least as would keep the teacher respectable. In Scotland, the office of a schoolmaster was formerly much more lucrative than at present; and most of that class had received liberal education; and this is the reason why the common people in Scotland have been famous, even to a proverb, for their learning. But at present the salary of a country schoolmaster, independent of fees for scholars, is not greater than a ploughman can earn, being seldom more than £8:6:8; the consequence of which is, that this, which is in fact an honourable, because an useful profession, is now sinking into contempt. It is no longer an object to a man of learning; and we must soon be satisfied teachers with schoolmasters that can read, write, and cast accounts, a little better than the lowest of the people, or who from some natural deformity are unable to exercise a trade. And what in this case must become of the minds of the common people? They must be totally uncultivated.

We have observed a great difference between the cultivation of the common people in one part of Scotland compared with another; and we have found, that wherever a schoolmaster is looked upon as a mean profession, there is scarcely a duly qualified person to be found to undertake the office; and in those places the common people are lamentably ignorant. In other places a rain, where the schoolmaster is considered as one of the principal persons in the parish, there men of a liberal education, young divines, and preachers, do not think themselves disgraced by exercising this profession; and there the common people show a degree of acuteness, knowledge, and observation, and possess such polished manners, as raise them very high above those of their own rank in other parts of the country.

Many and keen have been the debates about a reform of government of late years; but little attention has been paid to the formation of the minds of the common people, who constitute the greater part of the nation; of course they are ready to join the standard of every seditionist demagogue who finds the alarm of oppression; and should they at length be roused, their cruelty and barbarity, like the common people of France, would be exactly in proportion to their ignorance and want of principle.

We are willing to hope, then, that the government and the monied men of the nation, who alone have property to lose and money to bestow, will at length find it to be their interest to patronize schoolmasters.