292 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, Etc., FOR IRELAND. 



to workers insufficiently prepared in the elements of science and art will for a 

 time have to be resorted to in Ireland than is the case in more developed 

 countries. But this, in its irregular applications at least, will be but a 

 temporary phase. Technical instruction in its true and permanent conception, 

 as a specialised but organic part of general education, whose aim is so to train 

 a man as to render him morally, intellectually, and physically master of his 

 best aptitudes, and able to apply these aptitudes in every fitting direction that 

 opportunity offers, will always be before the mind of the Department. It is 

 from men so trained, from their inventive brains, their skilful hands, their 

 developed and self-trustful personality, conscious of powers, and seeking for 

 opportunities to use them, that the true advancement of a nation's industries 

 must come. This has been the history of technical instruction, even in 

 countries which, like Ireland, have started without industries, and which have 

 also had to try the temporary phase referred to. 



For the purposes of higher technical and scientific education, the Depart- 

 ment has under its control, maintained from Imperial funds, the institutions 

 already mentioned, which have hitherto been known as the Science and Art 

 Institutions. It is intended by the Department to remodel and adapt all 

 of these institutions to purposes which it was impossible for them adequately 

 to serve under former circumstances, and to make them living factors in the 

 promotion of practical education and the industries and agriculture of the 

 country. The Royal College of Science, as it has been called up to the present, 

 will, it is proposed, be made the chief technical college for Ireland, a real 

 " polytechnicum " or college of science applied to agriculture and industries ; 

 and for this purpose it will be re-organised, provided with new buildings, and 

 equipped in such a fashion as to bring it, at least in quality, level with the best 

 technical colleges. Soon after the Act came into force a Departmental Com- 

 mittee was appointed, by minute of the Vice-President, to consider and report 

 as to the best means of carrying out this reform. This Committee consisted 

 of Sir W. de W. Abney, K.C.B. ; Mr. T. P. Gill, Secretary of the Department ; 

 Captain T. B. Shaw, then Assistant Secretary in respect of Technical Instruc- 

 tion ; Mr. S. E. Spring-Rice, C.B., Auditor ot the Civil List ; Mr. J. G. Barton, 

 C.B., Commissioner of Valuation for Ireland ; Sir James Musgrave, Bart., of 

 Musgrave Bros., Belfast ; and Mr. W. B. Harrington, of Harrington and Co., 

 Cork. Their labours resulted in a detailed Report which will be a valuable 

 guide to the Department in re-organising this College. The Metropolitan 

 School of Art, when, in due time, it is reconstituted and brought into full 

 activity in the work of the Department, ought to become what Ireland has so 

 long lacked, a centre of life and inspiration for Irish Art, and especially for 

 Irish Art applied to industry. The Irish people are said by those who have 

 special knowledge of artistic handicrafts to possess still the aptitudes which 

 the collection of Irish Antiquities in the Museum shows to have belonged to 

 their ancestors ; and it is quite probable that in the class of industries in which 

 the individuality of the wor.ker imparts a special element of value they may 

 achieve particular success. A national School of Art, encouraging local free- 

 dom, aiming at distinctive national qualities, having at its hand, as part of its 

 inspiration, the beautiful and suggestive objects in the Museum, taking its 

 place in a system of education in which the teaching of Art was sympathetically 

 encouraged in every part of the country, might have a great influence on Art 

 and Industries in Ireland ; and such a centre it is hoped what is now called the 

 Metropolitan School of Art may become. The Science and Art Museum, in 

 Kildare-street, which already possesses collections of great value to the 

 interests of science, industries, and art, and the other Institutions will be 

 developed similarly, so as to assist in their several ways the work with which 

 the Department has been entrusted. 



