But if education was to be secularised, might not the ark be chopped up for firewood? Education was a problem that, in its private and public aspects, engrossed Disraeli from his youth. In the second of two election addresses at High Wycombe in the memorable year 1832 he had announced: “... By repealing the taxes upon knowledge, I would throw the education of the people into the hands of the philosophic student, instead of the ignorant adventurer.” He believed that its current principles were constantly wrong--that words were taught instead of ideas, and grammar studied instead of character; and he was also a great advocate of the wisdom of steeping the youth of a nation in national literature. It was a keen disappointment to him that he was deprived of the occasion of settling--partially, at any rate--the problem of national education, and he considered that the less it was fettered by direct State interference and the more it was helped by State support, the better. He was persuaded that any national system ought to be religious. For the Church’s original training of the people, for her alliance with the Universities, too, he had the keenest admiration. “Nothing is more surprising to me,” he urged in 1872, “than ... that in the nineteenth century the charge against the Church of England should be that Churchmen, and especially the clergy, had educated the people.... I think the greatest distinction of the clergy is the admirable manner in which they have devoted their lives and fortunes to this greatest of national objects.”[104]