poverty, from the burden of keeping up their interest, even in this beneficial fund.

It is sometimes said that the fees may be raised, and that if the teacher be zealous, he will increase the number of his scholars. But two circumstances must be attended to, before too much weight be given to these considerations. In the first place, the increasing of his scholars is only within his power to a limited extent. The position of his school is fixed; and even where it is well placed, there is always some part of the parish so far off, that the presence of a resident private teacher thins the established school, in spite of all that the ability of its master may do to fill it. Though, therefore, talent and zeal will unquestionably have their reward here as in other situations, the extent of the reward by no means depends upon the zeal purely. In the second place, it seems to be universally admitted, that no addition to the existing fees would increase the emoluments of the master, but rather the reverse. The returns from almost every parish state that there is annually a considerable loss, from the difficulty of levying the fees already exigible. The emoluments of the teachers, therefore, may be considered as great already, upon an average, as any teaching on the present system will ever make them: And therefore, if their condition is to be improved, it must be by some addition to their salaries, in the first instance; which may ultimately increase the fees by improving the character of teachers and of schools. All hope of increasing the emoluments by mere fees, is excluded by the indisputable fact, that private teachers of the same description, are almost universally in a lower scale both of comfort and of qualification than the established master. In short, a respectable independence cannot be made out of mere teaching, if it be confined chiefly to the teaching of the lower orders. There is a constant temptation, therefore, held out to well qualified men to withdraw, and to ill qualified ones to come in; and this gradual degradation of education, by bringing it always down till it becomes of the lowest description of which even the poor will accept, and then dies out, because it is not worth being kept up,-is the very evil which it ought to be the policy of the state to prevent.

We have hitherto been speaking of the case in which there is one teacher within the parish. But the statute of 1803 made a provision for two; and the situation of the secondary masters, where this part of the act has been enforced, is still worse. In this case, the salary for both is restricted to L.33, 6s. 7d. ; and the second master has never any house or garden. It is needless to add, that, under this system, he must generally be in the most wretched condition. He commonly gets L.10 or

L.12; and with this pittance, is set to make what he can out of the most scattered and poorest part of the population, without a dwelling-house or even a school-house, or anything to give him either comfort or respectability. We have seen nothing written, and have never heard anything said, except in decided condemnation of this part of the system. The very fact of naming a second teacher, is a public admission that one is insufficient and, after this, to make him a beggar, is to degrade his profession in popular estimation.

Lest the accuracy of these arithmetical details should be questioned, the existing condition and prospects of our parish schools may be judged of by two simple facts. 1st, Although there was formerly no written rule prescribing the branches of knowledge which the masters should be capable of teaching, yet, in point of fact, from the understood necessity of their situation, all of them were qualified to keep up the general education required for the whole middle rank of the community; and, in particular, no one could pretend to act as a parochial schoolmaster, without knowing Latin, and generally Greek too. This was positively enjoined by the Church courts; and in the year 1774, a proposed teacher was objected to before the General Assembly by the parishioners, on the single ground of his ignorance of the Roman language. The author of the "State"ment of the Experience," says, very justly, that "When this "ceases to be a valid objection in all cases, the parochial schools "will no longer answer their original design." Now, although the general fitness of our schoolmasters be undoubted, we appeal to every one acquainted with the fact, whether there has not, of late years, been an increased difficulty of getting right men to take the situation, and whether, as an example of their declension, several subjects, formerly familiar, and, in particular, Latin, be not gradually disappearing from our schools. 2dly, A parish schoolmaster is naturally so much engrossed with the proper dignity and respectability of his peculiar business, that his voluntarily engaging in any other avocation, is conclusive evidence that his official emoluments are too small. Yet it is notorious, that they are often absolutely obliged to combine their office of schoolmaster with other most unworthy occupations. It is recorded that, in one case, the public teacher kept a shop; that in another, he was an auctioneer. Their being land-measurers is not uncommon; and the author of the "Statement of "the Experience," after mentioning that one of them had practised as a country attorney, says, that in one place where the salary had been divided, "and the teachers were in a parity of "wretchedness, we found one of the masters, a meritorious man,

"in the habit, during every school vacation, of hiring himself "as a day-labourer in a harvest field, to eke out the slender "emoluments which kept himself, a wife, and children, in pos"session of the bare necessaries of life. The education of mere "letters, which is effected by the hedge schools of Ireland, may "be secured by such men ; but moral influence they can have "none."

How can we wonder at their being sometimes found in these disreputable employments, when we reflect that there are hundreds of them whose whole emoluments are positively less than that of menial servants or artisans? A labourer, who has regularly halfa-crown a-day, is better paid than the average of our parochial teachers. Yet these are the men who are not only expected, but required, to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic—who, in addition to this, do, in a great majority of instances, teach, and ought always to be able to teach, Latin and geography; and who, besides these, often teach the elements of Greek, French, and Mathematics. It is mortifying to see from these returns, that all of these branches of education are actually taught at this moment, by persons whose whole emoluments do not amount to L.25 a-year.

It is not, however, by merely looking at sums, that we can ever determine the adequacy or inadequacy of official pay at different periods. Little satisfaction, for example, would be got, with reference to this question, by ascertaining, on the nicest principles of value, the exact proportion which L.11, 2s. 3d., the highest salary in 1696, bears to L.22, 4s. 5d., the highest in 1827. The only practical method of adjusting the comparative condition of public officers in different times, is to view them relatively to the rest of the community at each period. Now the station held by a parish schoolmaster formerly is perfectly well known. There was not a greater man in the parish, except the minister. Indeed, he was not much inferior, in point of emolument, to the minister-whose income, in 1696, was probably not, upon an average, L.30-and not at all in mental acquirements. In the year 1706, the General Assembly passed an act, recommending those who had the appointment of schoolmasters, "to prefer men who have passed their course at college or "universities." The fact, that men who had done so, were willing to undertake the duties of the parish school, is a sufficient mark of the station which a schoolmaster then occupied. Every class in the community has since made a start upwards, of which our forefathers never dreamt, and which, if they were to return, would make them not know their own country. One of the first things they would look for, would be the schoolmaster;

and, instead of finding him nearly at the head of everything in the parish, they would be surprised to discover him far below the level of the average. They would find that, while the tenantry, the smaller merchants, manufacturers, and even the menials, had all advanced greatly, the public teacher had rather fallen lower. And they would lament this the more, when it was explained that their poverty was aggravated by the decay of many of the moral circumstances to which the schoolmaster once owed a great part of his respectability. The ancient reverence for those who kept the lamp of knowledge, has necessarily declined, according as its light has been divided among a greater number of hands. The respectability imparted to the school, by its being presided over by one who was qualified, and probably destined, to fill the church, is nearly at an end. And the increase of the population, while the number of teachers has remained stationary, has enabled whole districts and generations to grow up without any acquaintance with this part of our system. Our schoolmasters are still a singularly meritorious class of persons; far more learned than was to have been expected from the reward their learning meets with; faithful to their trust; of unimpeachable personal respectability; and perfectly worthy of being relied upon as the guardians of youthful knowledge and morality. No such public officers were ever obtained for the service of any country, for such remuneration. It is the highest evidence of their worth, as well as of the lingering respect which still attaches to their situation, that they have gone on so long in the silent and assiduous discharge of their duties,-honoured by the notice of the Legislature only once in a hundred and thirty years,-while society has been moving past them, and all other public functionaries have been enabled to keep pace with it. They are declining unquestionably; but not nearly so much as might have been expected; and their declension is exactly the reason why their influence should be maintained, by increasing the pecuniary reward of their services, in proportion as other supports have been taken from them by the change of manners. It is most distressing to be obliged to contrast the personal decline of these men with that universal improvement of which they have been the chief causes.

Some are afraid of raising their salaries too high, because this may render them independent of their fees, and, of course, careless of their schools. There can be no doubt of the soundness of this principle, whether as applied to them or to any other man. But it is utterly preposterous to apply it to these parish teachers, who are not within many degrees of the line

where the laziness arising from wealth is likely to begin. Twentytwo pounds sterling, we may rely on it, will not make even a Scotch schoolmaster too comfortable to work. And he can never get more than this without actually working; and he gets the excess exactly in proportion as he does work. But the hardship which we feel for, is, that in spite of all his working, he cannot make much more than these twenty-two pounds, or so much. Where his school is necessarily poor, he ought to be decently paid, otherwise no properly qualified person will take the place, and education will gradually get despised; and he ought to be well paid where it is rich, because it can only have become so, by his being an assiduous and able teacher. There is a point, no doubt, at which this must stop; but we have not come so near it yet as to make it worth while to keep it in view. The author of the "Statement and Representation," (whom we understand to be another respectable clergyman,) has proposed a remedy for this case, however, when it shall occur. The object of his representation is to suggest and explain a mode of making the salary above a certain sum, be in proportion to the quantity of scholars above a certain number,-which proportions are to be fixed according to an actual examination of the population and other circumstances of each parish. This is all quite right in principle, and is very well explained; but it appears too complicated to be practicable, and it provides for an evil of which there is no prospect. The fear that the Scotch parochial schoolmasters may get corrupted by excess of pay, is the most premature of all fears.

Assuming, then, that their condition might be safely improved, we must say that the improvements which they suggest have not the usual fault of exorbitancy. In September, 1824, they circulated a statement, in two printed pages, of their grievances and their claims; and the following was the sum total of their demands::

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1. "The schoolmaster to be restored to the privilege of appeal to the higher Church courts, of which he was deprived "by the Act 1803." Schoolmasters are under the jurisdiction of their respective presbyteries in the first instance,-but, till unexpectedly deprived of it by the statute of 1803, they had always enjoyed the privilege of appealing to the superior Church Courts, which is a privilege enjoyed at this moment by every other individual in Scotland. Why or how it was taken from them nobody can tell. But as the law stands, it not only exposes them to the absolute control of a very small body of neighbouring clergymen, but exhibits them at all times as in a state of degradation, by being deprived of that rigl