The following chapters on the Educational Question first appeared as a series of articles in the _Witness_ newspaper. They present, in consequence, a certain amount of digression, and occasional re-statement and explanation, which, had they been published simultaneously, as parts of a whole, they would not have exhibited. The controversy was vital and active at every stage of their appearance. Statements made and principles laid down in the earlier articles had, from the circumstance that their truth had been questioned or their soundness challenged, to be re-asserted and maintained in those which followed; and hence some little derangement in the management of the question, for which, however, the interest which must always attach to a real conflict may be found to compensate. That portion of the controversy, however, which arose out of one of the articles of the series, and which some have deemed personal, has been struck out of the published edition of the pamphlet, and retained in but an inconsiderable number of copies, placed in the hands of a few friends. In omitting it where it has been omitted, the writer has acted on the advice of a gentleman for whose judgment he entertains the most thorough respect, and from a desire that the general argument should not be prejudiced by a matter naturally, but not necessarily, connected with it. And in retaining it where it has been retained, he has done so in the full expectation of a time not very distant, when it will be decided that he has neither outraged the ordinary courtesies of controversy, nor taken up a false line of inference or statement; and when the importance of the subject discussed will be regarded as quite considerable enough to make any one earnest, without the necessity of supposing that he had been previously angry.