I now pass on to the subject of Education; and your treatment of this subject, my dear Earl, in your speech, is not the least remarkable portion of the oration. You declared that ‘it was positively shocking to think that such care should be taken to convert negroes to Christianity thousands of miles off, while the most deplorable ignorance prevailed at home. The Church enjoys revenues the amount of which actually bring the ministers of the gospel into discredit, as evidencing their avaricious and grasping disposition;--while the people remain as uneducated as if not a single shilling were devoted to spiritual pastors or lay instructors.’ You boldly ‘accused both houses of Parliament and the upper classes generally of being anxious to keep the masses in a state of ignorance. Where instruction is imparted gratuitously, it is entirely of a sectarian nature; just as if men required to study grammar, history, arithmetic, or astronomy on Church of England principles. The whole land is over-run by clergymen, who live upon the fat of it--Universities and public schools have been richly endowed for the purpose of propagating knowledge and encouraging learning,--and yet the people are lamentably ignorant. It is a wicked and impudent falsehood to declare that they are intellectually dull or averse to mental improvement. Common sense--that best of sense--is the special characteristic of the working classes; and those who can read are absolutely greedy in their anxiety to procure books, newspapers, and cheap publications for perusal. The fact is, that the mind of the industrious population is a rich soil, wherein all good seed will speedily take root, shoot up, and bring forth fruit to perfection: but the apprehensions or narrow prejudices of the upper classes--the oligarchy--will not permit the seed to be sown. Now as the soil must naturally produce something, even of its own accord, it too often gives birth to rank weeds; and this is made a matter of scorn, reviling, and reproach. But the real objects of that scorn--that reviling--and that reproach, are those who obstinately and wickedly neglect to put the good soil to the full test of fertilisation.’--All these observations,” continued his Royal Highness, “were as applicable to Castelcicala a short time back as they have ever been and still are in England. But the reforms in the Church and in the Educational System were not the least important of those which characterised the new order of things. The two institutions were separated, and rendered entirely independent of each other, the Church being abandoned entirely to the voluntary principle, and the duty of educating the people being attached to the State, a Minister of Public Instruction being appointed. All sectarianism in education is now abolished: the system is entirely secular. The schoolmasters are appointed by the municipal corporations in the various localities, and their salaries are paid by the State.