ADDRESS. Ixxxix 



as experience might show to be most effective for the purpose. Once this 

 kind of direct examination-teaching has taken root, and is known to produce 

 the desired effect of getting young men through the examinations, its exist- 

 ence encourages the tendency on the part of the candidates to look merely to 

 the examination as the end and aim of their study ; and a class of teachers 

 is developed whose exertions are essentially antagonistic to those of the 

 examiners. 



There are, no doubt, teachers with a sufficiently clear apprehension of their 

 duty, and sufficient authority, to convince some of the candidates that the 

 proper object of their study should be to increase their power of usefulness 

 in the career for which they are preparing themselves, by thoroughly master- 

 ing up to a prescribed point certain branches of knowledge ; and that until 

 they had honestly taken the means to do this and believed they had done it 

 effectually, they ought not to go up for examination nor to wish to commence 

 their career. 



But it is desirable that all teachers be placed under such circumstances 

 that it may become their interest as well as their duty to cooperate to the 

 utmost of their powers in the object for which the examiners are working. 

 For this purpose their records of the work done under their guidance by each 

 pupil ought to be carefully inspected by the examiners before framing their 

 questions, and ought to be accepted as affording the chief evidence of the 

 respective merits of the pupils. 



This is not the place for considering how the general funds for an 

 effective system of national education can best be raised, nor how existing 

 educational endowments can best be used in aid of those funds. It is well 

 known that some colleges of Oxford and Cambridge are possessed of rich 

 endowments, and that many distinguished members of those universities are 

 desirous that the annual proceeds of those endowments should be distributed 

 upon some system better calculated to promote the advancement of learning 

 than that which generally prevails. Indeed we may confidently hope that, 

 true to their glorious traditions, those colleges will be led, by the high- 

 minded and enlightened counsels of their members, to rely upon improving 

 usefulness in the advancement of learning as the only secure and worthy 

 basis of their action in the use of their funds, so that they may take a 

 leading part in such system of national education as may be moulded out 

 of the present chaos. 



But the foundations of a national system of education ought to be laid 

 independently of the present arrangements at Oxford and Cambridge, 

 for we may be sure that the more progress the system makes the more 

 easy will become the necessary reforms in the older universities and 

 colleges. 



It is clearly undesirable that Government should longer delay obtaining 

 such full and accurate knowledge of the existing national resources for 

 educational purposes, and of the manner in which they are respectively 

 utilized, as may enable them to judge of the comparative prospects of use- 

 fulness presented by the various modes of distributing educational grants. 

 They ought to know what has been done and what is doing in the various 

 public educational establishments before they can judge which of them would 

 be likely to make the best use of a grant of public money. 



We have official authority for expecting such impartial administration of 

 educational grants; and it cannot be doubted that before long due means 

 will be taken to supply the preliminary conditions. 



You are no doubt aware that a lloyal Commission was appointed some 



