290 



A n nivers ary Meeting, 



[Nov. 30, 



The City and Guilds Institute is tbe outcome of the perception of 

 the necessity for technical education, in the interests of industry, by 

 the wealthiest city and the wealthiest guilds in the world ; it may, 

 therefore, seem singular that the chief obstacle to the proper 

 development of the important schools which it has founded is 

 poverty. Such, however, I understand to be the case. The Central 

 Institution requires an assured income of at least £15,000 a-year if 

 it is to work properly; but the joint resources of the City and Guilds 

 of London, at present, appear to be able to afford it only a precarious, 

 annually- voted, subsidy of £9,000 a-year — far less, that is to say, than 

 the private income of scores of individual Londoners. In Germany, 

 a similar institution would demand and receive £20,000 a-year as a 

 matter of course ; but Englishmen are famous for that which a 

 perplexed Chancellor of the Exchequer (I think it was) once called 

 their "ignorant impatience of taxation," and there is no occasion 

 on which they so readily display that form of impatience as 

 when they are asked for money for education, especially scientific 

 education. I am bound to add, however, that my experience on the 

 Council and Committees of the Institute has left no doubt on my 

 miud that my colleagues have every desire to carry out the work they 

 have commenced thoroughly; and that the money difficulty will dis- 

 appear along with certain other difficulties which, I am disposed to 

 think, need never have arisen. 



Such are the chief matters of business, if I may so call them, 

 which it is proper for me, in my Presidential capacity, to bring before 

 the Society. But it has been not unusual, of late years, for the occu- 

 pant of the Chair to offer some observations of a wider bearing for 

 the consideration of the Society ; and I am the more tempted to 

 trespass upon your patience for this purpose, as it is the last 

 occasion on which I shall be able to use, or abuse, the President's 

 privileges. 



So far as my own observations, with respect to some parts of the 

 field of natural knowledge, and common report, with respect to others, 

 enable me to form an opinion, the past year exhibits no slackening in 

 the accelerated speed with which the physical sciences have been 

 growing, alike in extent and in depth, during several decades. We are 

 now so accustomed to this " unhasting but unresting " march of 

 physical investigation ; it has become so much a part of the customary 

 course of events, that, with every day, I might almost say with every 

 hour, something should be added to our store of information 

 respecting the constitution of nature, some new insight into the order 

 of the cosmos should be gained, that you would probably listen with 

 incredulity to any account of the year's work which could not be 

 summed up in this commonplace of Presidential addresses. 



