52 Position of Belfast in Relation to Technical Instruction. 



taee to our industrial progress. The opportunity is given 

 Belfast to-day to help to revive the best forms of our national skill 

 open up new fields of industry, and by a well considered scheme 

 of technical instruction set an example for all Ireland, and 

 justify anew the imputed title of Belfast as the industrial 

 metropolis of Ireland. 



Professor Fitzgerald, in opening the discussion, said he wished 

 to emphasise what Mr. Gray had said as to what the old Belfast 

 people were in the beginning of the century, compared with 

 what they were at the present time. What Mr. Gray had said 

 was a most interesting lesson, and showed that Belfast was fifty 

 years behind the place where i': was fifty years ago. Could 

 they conceive that the old Belfast people, who were willing to 

 allow a little money out of their pockets to build such insti- 

 tutions as that in which they were met — could they conceive 

 that they would allow such an important place as the Victoria 

 Institute to break down in the way it had been allowed to go ? 



With regard to the necessity of breadth of the local 

 scheme touched upon by Mr. Gray, he might say the Cor- 

 poration had got a peculiarity of never saying anything 

 about anything that they coald help. They appointed a mixed 

 Committee, who drew up a scheme which was fairly broad, and 

 as he was on that Committee he could give them some idea of 

 the plan. The general notion was that the Corporation Tech- 

 nical Committee should co-oot a number of outsiders, not 

 exceeding one-half of the members of the Corporation, to form 

 a mixed Committee for working the technical education scheme 

 in Belfast, and that the immediate working of schools should be 

 regulated by a board of heads of departments of schools. 

 The departments of the school were not precisely finally 

 settled, there was a list made by the Committee, but it would 

 be liable to alteration from time to time. Among the depart- 

 ments of the school it was intended to comprise a set of 

 preparatory evening classes for youths, some of whom were 

 serving their apprenticeship at the present time. It has been 

 found that this was necessary in other large towns. In order 



