It is the right and duty of every Government to educate its people, whatever the kinds or varieties of religion which may obtain among them;--it is the right and duty of every parent to select, on his own responsibility, his children's teacher, and to determine what his children are to be taught;--it is the right and duty of every member of the commonwealth to see that the commonwealth's money, devoted to educational purposes, be not squandered on incompetent men, and, in virtue of his contributions as a ratepayer, to possess a voice with the parents of a country in the selection of its salaried schoolmasters. There exist, on the one hand, the right and duty of the State; there exist, on the other, the rights and duties of the parents and ratepayers; and we find both parents and ratepayers presenting themselves in the aggregate, and for all practical purposes in this matter, as a single class, viz. the _householders_ of the kingdom. But as, in dealing with these in purely political questions, we exclude a certain portion of them from the exercise of the _political_ franchise, and that simply because, as classes, they are uninformed or dangerous, and might employ power, if they possessed it, to the public prejudice, so would we exclude a certain proportion of them, on similar grounds, from the _educational_ franchise. In selecting, however, the safe classes of householders, we would employ tests somewhat dissimilar in their character from those to which the Reform Act extends its exclusive sanction, and establish a somewhat different order of qualifications from those which it erects.