ADDRESS. 18} 
You will understand why it is that Germany was obliged, even if she had 
not been willing, to spend such large sums in order to equip the university 
of her conquered province, Alsace-Lorraine. France and Germany are 
fully aware that science is the source of wealth and power, and that the 
only way of advancing it is to encourage universities to make researches 
and to spread existing knowledge through the community. Other 
European nations are advancing on the same lines. Switzerland is a 
remarkable illustration of how a country can compensate itself for its 
natural disadvantages by a scientific education of its people. Switzerland 
contains neither coal nor the ordinary raw materials of industry, and is 
separated from other countries which might supply them by mountain 
barriers. Yet, by a singularly good system of graded schools, and by the 
great technical college of Ziirich, she has become a prosperous manufac- 
turing country. In Great Britain we have nothing comparable to this 
technical college, either in magnitude or efficiency. Belgium is reor- 
ganising its universities, and the State has freed the localities from the 
charge of buildings, and will in future equip the universities with efficient 
teaching resources out of public taxation. Holland, with a population of 
4,000,000 and a small revenue of 9,000,000/., spends 136,000. on her 
four universities. Contrast this liberality of foreign countries in the 
promotion of higher instruction with the action of our own country. 
Scotland, like Holland, has four universities, and is not very different 
from it in population, but it only receives 30,0001. from the State. By a 
special clause in the Scotch Universities Bill the Government asked 
Parliament to declare that under no circumstances should the Parlia- 
mentary grant be ever increased above 40,0007. According to the views 
of the British Treasury there is a finality in science and in expanding 
knowledge. 
The wealthy universities of Oxford and Cambridge are gradually con- 
structing laboratories for science. The merchant princes of Manchester 
have equipped their new Victoria University with similar laboratories. 
Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities have also done so, partly at the 
cost of Government and largely by private subscriptions. The poorer 
universities of Aberdeen and St. Andrews are still inefficiently provided 
with the modern appliances for teaching science. 
London has one small Government college and two chartered colleges, 
but is wholly destitute of a teaching university. It would excite great 
astonishment at the Treasury if we were to make the modest request that 
the great metropolis, with a population of four millions, should be put 
into as efficient academical position as the town of Strasburg, with 
104,000 inhabitants, by receiving, as that town does, 43,000. annually for 
academic instruction, and 700,000. for university buildings. Still, the 
amazing anomaly that London has no teaching university must ere long 
cease. 
It is a comforting fact that, in spite of the indifference of Parliament, 
the large towns of the kingdom are showing their sense of the need of 
