provided by Continental nations, England must, at no distant day, — 

 unless she bestirs herself in time, — find those nations outstripping her in 

 the arts of both peace and war. As sure as " knowledge is power," this 

 must be the result. The concurrent testimony of those best qualified to 

 decide on this question, has been summed iqo in the following terms : — 

 " Broadly viewed, the whole system of technical education has, at this 

 late day, to take root and grow in the English soil. The more we 

 consider this deficiency, the more marvellous and melancholy does it 

 appear. England, which has asserted and assumed her manufacturing 

 pre-eminence over all countries, — England, which at least for many 

 years maintained her asserted industrial supremacy, — has done so, in 

 spite of the absence of early education in the veiy groundwork of her 

 supremacy. She has been the birthplace and cradle of most of those 

 great mechanical inventions which have changed the face of society, and 

 given wings to commerce. The steam engine, the locomotive engine, 

 the application of steam to manifold uses, the steam hammer, the 

 planing machine, the spinning jenny, the power loom, and numerous 

 other machines — all owe their invention or improvement to our country ; 

 and the nearly exclusive use of these machines and implements for many 

 past years has been the principal cause of our manufacturing pre-eminence. 

 But free trade, international exhibitions, and extended international 

 intercoiirse, have made these wonderful machines and appliances known 

 and available to all Europe. During the last centviry we held our local 

 and our natural advantages withoiit serious rivalry, while we were 

 separated from the rest of Europe by the sea, and exempted from long 

 and desolating wars. All our natural possessions of coal and iron and 

 other materials, were then almost exclusively in our own hands and 

 under our own command. The case, however, at present is essentially 

 different. Other coim tries enjoy peace, other countries have displayed 

 energy and enterprise, and have seen and admired and adopted our tools 

 and our machines." 



I have already shown that the Government and Parliament of Great 

 Britain are at last fully alive to the danger of neglecting any longer 

 that systematic education, that scientific and practical training, — in a 

 word, all that tends to convert the mere workman into the artizan, and 

 the mere empiric into the artistic and scientific manager of great 

 industrial enterprises. It is keenly felt in the mother country that the 

 inquiiy now is not whether she has gained the highest place and 

 reputation, but whether she can retain them ; and that to rest (so to 

 speak) on her oai-s, is to drift backwards, for the tide of the world's 

 lifetime is fast ebbing. 



