"The comparative education of the Scotch clergy of the present generation, that is to say, their education compared to that of the Scotch people, is unquestionably lower than that of the Popish clergy compared to the education of their people. This is usually ascribed to the Popish clergy seeking to maintain their influence and superiority by keeping the people in gross ignorance. {123} But this opinion of our churchmen seems more orthodox than charitable or correct. The Popish clergy have in reality less to lose by the progress of education than our own Scotch clergy; because their pastoral influence and their church services being founded on ceremonial ordinances, come into no competition or comparison whatsoever in the public mind with anything similar that literature or education produces; and are not connected with the imperfect mode of conveying instruction which, as education advances, becomes obsolete and falls into disuse, and almost into contempt, although essential in our Scotch church. In Catholic Germany, in France, Italy, and even Spain the education of the common people in reading, writing, arithmetic, music, manners, and morals is at least as generally diffused, and as faithfully promoted by the clerical body, as in Scotland. It is by their own advance and not by keeping back the advance of the people, that the Popish priesthood of the present day seek to keep ahead of the intellectual progress of the community in Catholic lands; and they might, perhaps, retort on our Presbyterian clergy, and ask if they, too, are in their countries at the head of the intellectual movement of the age? Education is in reality not only not repressed but is encouraged by the Popish Church, and is a mighty instrument in its hands and ably used. In every street in Rome, for instance, there are at short distances public primary schools for the education of the children of the lower and middle classes in the neighborhood Rome, with a population of 158,678 souls, has 372 public primary schools with 482 teachers; and 14,099 children attending them. Has Edinburgh so many public schools for the instruction of those classes? I doubt it. Berlin, with a population about double that of Rome, has only 264 schools. Rome has also her university with an average attendance of 660 students; and the Papal States with a population of 2,500,000 (in 1846) contain seven universities. Prussia with a population of 14,000,000 has but seven."