[I]n the good town of Newcastle you will not find a dozen men, unless in some way practically connected with school work, who really understand our present code or have given their attention to the many serious questions involved in it. When this divorce between public intelligence and the directing department has existed for some time, the people begin to be accustomed to see a great system in operation in their midst, settled and worked for them in all its main lines by an office, morally, if not physically, some hundreds of miles away, and presently, with very few searchings of heart and very little intelligence exercised, they simply accept it and let themselves and their children be molded by it into — a something that they don’t exactly understand, and about which in the pressure of life they don’t find time to ask many questions. They are stupefied by the system, just because so little is required of them, mentally or practically, as individuals.
Auberon Herbert, letter to the editor, Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, as reprinted in The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State, 1885.