ABSTRACT
God wills human happiness; that happiness is attainable only through the medium of faculties; for the production of happiness those faculties must be exercised; the exercise of them pre-supposes liberty of action: these are the steps by which the people find their way from’ the Divine will to the law of equal freedom. There is indeed one plausible-looking way of meeting these arguments. It may be urged that in the child many of the faculties of the future man are undeveloped, and that as rights are primarily dependent on faculties, the rights of children cannot be co-extensive with those of adults, because their faculties are not so. That coercive education is impolitic, may be strongly suspected from the fact lately adverted to—the evident disposition towards the abandonment of it which modern systems of tiraining evince. Education has for its object the formation of character.
