The war involved a personal element and the charges of plagiarism which give spice to a popular controversy,All parties,and certainly the Utilitarians,strangely exaggerated the value of the new method.They regarded the proposal that children should be partly taught by other children instead of being wholly taught by adults as a kind of scientific discovery which would enormously simplify and cheapen education,Believers in the 'Panopticon'saw in it another patent method of raising the general level of intelligence,But the real question was between church and dissent.Was the church catechi** to be imposed or not?
This,as we have seen,was the occasion of Bentham's assault upon church and catechi**,on the other side,Bell's claims were supported with enthusiasm by all the tories,and by such men as Southey and Coleridge.Southey,who had defended Bell in the Quarterly,12undertook to be Bell's biographer 13and literary executor.Coleridge was so vehement in the cause that when lecturing upon 'Romeo and Juliet'in 1811,he plunged by way of exordium into an assault upon Lancaster's modes of punishment.14De Quincey testifies that he became a positive bore upon Bell's virtues.
In 1812Lancaster had got deeply into debt to the trustees of the Society,who included besides Allen,Joseph Fox a 'shallow,gloomy bigot'according to Place --and some other Quakers.Lancaster resented their control,and in 1812made over his Borough Road school to them,and set up one of his own at Tooting.They continued,however,to employ him,and in 1813formed themselves into the 'British and Foreign'School Society.Place had known Lancaster from 1804,and Mill had supported him in the press.They both became members of the committee,though Place took the most active part.
He makes many grave charges against Lancaster,whom he regarded as hopelessly flighty and impracticable,if not worse.Ultimately in 1814Lancaster resigned his position,and naturally retorted that Place was an infidel.Place,meanwhile,was ill at ease with the 'gloomy bigot,'as he calls Fox.After many quarrels,Fox succeeded in getting the upper hand,and Place finally withdrew from the committee in 1815.
Two other schemes arose out of this,in which Mill was specially interested,but which both proved abortive.Mill and Place resolved in 1813to start a 'West London Lancasterian institution,'which was to educate the whole population west of temple Bar.They were joined by Edward Wakefield,father of the Edward Gibbon Wakefield who in later years was known as an economist,and himself author of a work of considerable reputation,An Account of Ireland,Statistical and Political (1812).The three joined Joseph Fox,and ultimately a meeting was held in August 1813.Sir James Mackintosh was in the chair.Mill wrote the address,and motions were proposed by his friend Joseph Hume and by William Allen.Papers were circulated,headed 'Schools for all,'15and the institution was launched with a sufficiency of applause.But the 'gloomy bigot'was secretary.He declared that he would rather see the institution destroyed than permit it to be used for infidel purposes.The Bible was,of course,to be read in the schools,but Fox wished that the Bible alone should be read.As the committee,according to Place,included four infidels,three Unitarians,six Methodists,two Baptists,two Roman Catholics,and several members of the Established Church,it was hardly a happy family.To add to the confusion,Sir Francis Burdett,who had contributed a thousand pounds,had taken it into his head that Place was a government spy.16The Association,as is hardly surprising,ceased to exist in 1816,after keeping up a school of less than three hundred children,and ended in hopeless failure.The Utilitarians had higher hopes from a scheme of their own.This was the Chrestomathic school which occasioned Bentham's writing.An association was formed in February 1814.Mackintosh,Brougham,Mill,Allen,Fox,and Wakefield were to be trustees.The school was to apply Lancasterian principles to the education of the middle classes,and Bentham was to supply them with a philosophy and with a site in his garden.There the old gentleman was to see a small version of the Panopticon building,and,for a time,he took great delight in the prospect.Gradually,however,it seems to have dawned upon him that there might be inconveniences in being overlooked by a set of even model schoolboys.There were difficulties as to funds.Ricardo offered £200and collected subscriptions for £900,but Place thought that he might have been more liberal.About 1817they counted upon subscriptions for £2310.Allen was treasurer,Place secretary,and the dukes of Kent and York were on the committee.