ABSTRACT
Benevolent individuals, of preceding generations, have exerted themselves for the education of youth ; but that these exertions have been inefficient or too limited, is proved by the great proportion of the labouring poor, arrived to years of maturity, who have suffered, and are still suffering inexpressible loss in respect to their mental concerns, from the lamentable ignorance which still prevails amongst them. To a consciousness of this, the educated part of society have been so long familiarized, that, till of late years, even those who felt and cherished a friendly interest in their present and future happiness, have never sought the means of their deliverance from the shades of darkness in which they have been immured from childhood to their latest periods. Lamentably indeed did our forefathers neglect this important duty towards their indigent fellow-creatures; but expressions of regret will be unavailing. To discover a remedy for this great evil has fallen to the lot of certain individuals, the application of whose talents and industry merits an honourable record in the history of the country, for the benefit of which they have been employed in removing from the public mind a long fixed, but erroneous opinion, that persons of mature age were not capable of receiving instruction in the knowledge of letters, or that they could not devote a sufficient portion of their time to acquire a qualification to read. The removal of this injurious apprehension is unquestionably of high importance, not only to the poor, but to society at Iarge. Someindividuals of mature age, we are well aware, have been, from time immemorial, introduced into schools established for the education of children; and have acquired that portion of knowledge which has been essentially serviceable to them through the remainder of life. A few years since, it would have been deemed a whimsical and chimerical project to have collected a school of persons from twenty to eighty years of age, under the expectation of being able to teach them to read ; and the man who should have undertaken to effect this object, would have subjected himself to the ridicule of his neighbours; but happy will it be for tens of thousands, I trust I may say, that there are men whose benevolence has induced them to disregard the sneers of the scornful and incredulous, and make that experiment which has been crowned with success far exceeding their most sanguine expectations, and opened a most cheering prospect to our view, in the animating contemplation of the moral and religious benefits capable of resulting from it.
