158 Sir Robert Kane on the 
branches of industry ; and by the long-established habits and 
system, and the enormous capitals of the industrial classes, 
its. natural advantages have been most effectively applied. 
Hence, in England, even under the disadvantage of the want 
of industrial education, great means of practical success 
exist, and will continue to exist; but in a country such as 
Ireland, where hitherto manufacturing industry has been 
developed only in one or two departments, and even those 
not generally diffused—where the public mind has not been 
specially fixed on industrial pursuits as the most desirable 
career for the middle classes—where the natural resources; 
although rich and abundant, are not so glaringly favourable, 
at least as regards coal, as in England—and where there 
exists no prestige of established success to command accept- 
ance in the market—there evidently an advance in industrial 
character and pursuits can only be attained by means of a 
thorough appreciation and employment of all those points in 
which we can equal or excel our neighbours, and by an 
equally perfect acquaintance with those matters in which 
the circumstances either of the country or of ourselves forbid 
us to hope for any successful competition. Thus the indus- 
trial future of Ireland, at least, must depend on the know- 
ledge which her people will acquire of the resources at her 
disposal, and of the means by which those resources can be 
made the most’ of. But for this is required an exact and 
scientific, as well as a practical knowledge of the condition 
and appliances of analogous departments of industry in other 
countries, and, consequently, a well organized system of in- 
dustrial education. 
The popular exhibition, standing thus to the true eduea- 
tional museum nearly in the same relation as a popular lec- 
ture in science stands to sound systematic teaching, has 
admirably served its purpose: of exciting attention, stimu- 
lating curiosity, and directing publie opinion; but these 
effects would soon die away, and the most valuable results 
be lost, if, in its several aspects, it-were not followed up by 
arrangements of a more permanent character. In this it is 
to be hoped that the various institutions which we already 
possess in Ireland will heartily co-operate, and that each, in , 
