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    Untitled Article

    ledge . ' The number before us is for 1833 . It contains a Tabular View of Education in the United States , and in Europe . By this it appears that the proportion of pupils who receive the common school instruction , to the whole population , is , in En o-land , one out of 15 * 3 ; while in New York it is one out of 3 * 9 ; in

    Massachusetts , Maine , and Connecticut , about one out of 4 ; in all New England , at least one out of 5 ; in Pennsylvania , one out of 8 ; Illinois , one out of 13 ; and Kentucky , one out of 21 . In all the New States one thirty-sixth of the land is set apart for the endowment of public schools . So much for the advantage of an Established Church in the promotion of public instruction . Even the recently-settled Illinois can compete with England ., while all New England beats us threefold . In the higher , or collegiate education , the eastern States have the advantage over England : the others not . England has one academical student in every 1 , 132 of her population ; the average for the Eastern States is one in every 1 , 118 ; for the United States altogether ,

    one in 2 , 078 . But this proportion is rapidly on the increase . In the middle States it had nearly doubled in two years . The same in the western States . In the southern States it had nearly trebled . There can be no doubt of the collegiate institutions soon leaving us as far behind as the public schools , unless such a reform be obtained as will give us a really efficient machinery of popular instruction .

    The strictly religious results are such as might be expected . Almost the entire population of the United States is in connexion with some religious denomination or other . The census of 1830 returns a total ( including 2 , 000 , 000 of slaves , and 300 , 000 of free persons of colour ) of 12 ^ 854 , 890 . The religious statistics for that year are imperfect . Those for 1833 give the population of the different sects and churches at a total of 12 , 496 , 953 . The

    number of communicants amounts to 1 , 324 , 032 . There are no documents by which it can be ascertained , generally , what number of persons are in communion with the Church of England . That it must fall greatly short of one out of every twelve nobod y can doubt . In our January number ( p . 69 ) are some extracts from the c Case of the Dissenters , ' by which it appears that , in one diocese , the returns are 19 , 069 attendants at church , out of a

    population of 110 , 000 ; and only 4 , 134 receiving the communion . This gives one out of seven for hearers , and about one in thirty-ei ght as communicants . So that , tried by this test , the voluntary system produces more than three times as much religion in America as the Establishment does in England . But the American returns of communicants omit those of the

    Protestant Episcopal Church , Universalists , Roman Catholics , Quakers , Congregational Unitarians , Miilenarians , and New Jerusalemites ; and allowing for these , the number of communicants is , in proportion to the population , as one to eight ; or uearly five times the

    Untitled Article

    Defence of the Church Establishment . 253

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 253, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/21/