Excerpt from The Higher Education of Boys in England: With Twenty-Two Special Contributions
"It generally argues some degree of natural impotence of mind, or some want of knowledge of the world, to hazard Plans of Government, except from a seat of Authority." Burke, in the exordium to his speech on Conciliation with America, makes this admission and yet proceeds to prefer a higher duty to decorum, on the ground that "to restore order and repose to an Empire so great, and so distracted as ours, is, merely in the attempt, an undertaking that would ennoble the flights of the highest genius, and obtain pardon for the efforts of the meanest understanding."
No better apology can be made for the appearance of the present volume. We, too, are venturing to hazard Schemes of Reform without any Authority beyond that which experience, whether of success or failure, inevitably bestows. And we, in turn, since no better qualified members of a nervous and self-critical profession seem willing to risk their skins or reputation, are sacrificing modesty, and that dignified reserve which is so impressive, in the interests of what we have come to believe to be a very real and urgent public duty. Perhaps, moreover, we shall, with Burke, be held excused for error in our attempt to bring order into the chaos of an Empire, not indeed of countries, but of schools, since this Empire still, as in the days of Matthew Arnold, is condemned to such sterility and distraction through contempt for scientific and expert government, that even an ineffectual effort towards its reconstitution has become less unpardonable than the silence of timidity and the lethargy of selfishness.
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