That a little learning is a dangerous thing, is an old saying, which has
been fearfully repeated in these days; but a little learning every one
will have, and the only way of averting the danger is, by providing the
people with all facilities for acquiring more.
Lord Stowell was no admirer of the prevailing rage for universal
education, and made a remark with which Lord Sidmouth was much struck:
“If you provide,” he said, “a larger amount of cultivated talent than
there is a demand for, the surplus is very likely to turn sour.”
Sir John Coleridge, in expressing his high sense of the obligations of
the country to the University of Oxford for their recent aids to
Middle-Class Education, says: “If the lower orders are to be raised in
political power in this country, to make that a blessing you must
cultivate the lower orders for discharging the duties to be thrown upon
them. Therefore it is that I think the University of Oxford conferred
the largest benefit that it had in its power to confer upon this country
at large, when, passing simply from the education of the higher orders
and those who were destined for the Church, it spread out its hands in a
frank and liberal spirit to all classes of society, and offered to
connect every body with itself, in a certain measure, who would only fit
himself for it by proper application.”