544 
Abstract. Report of Agricultural Discussions. 
occupations open to the sons of agriculturists. For this reason it was 
the more necessary that the Council, in any system of education they 
encouraged, should be careful not to give prizes to those schools alone 
which confined their attention to the education of agriculturists. Many 
schools had been started on the public school principle, which was 
the only one, he thought, for which success could be claimed. For 
what test had the upper classes after their sons had been at a private 
school, but the test of a public school ? Supposing the farmer to pay 
a sufficient sum for the training of his boy at a private school, and to 
be unwilling that he should undergo the test of the middle class 
examination, what incentive was there in a school of thirty or forty 
pupils for boys to prepare themselves for a wide and searching 
examination ? In larger schools the incentive to work was much 
greater, inasmuch as with a greater number of boys the prizes given, 
however small in number, acted as a stimulus, and proved to the 
parents the amount of proficiency attained by their sons. There was 
already a school at Lancing, in Sussex ; at Hurstpicrpoint a still larger 
one for a thousand boys was rising. There was also one in Suffolk, 
with which he himself was connected, and for which a sum of 14,000Z. 
had been raised by the voluntary contributions of the gentry. The 
school in Suffolk, which would be opened in October next, was designed 
for all classes, not agriculturists alone ; and in order to anticipate the 
objection that the education it would afford would be so good that the 
higher classes chiefly, instead of those for whom it was more particu- 
larly intended, would avail themselves of it, he might state that it had 
been determined that the whole cost of board and education should 
not exceed 24L per annum, to include all expenses. Now, supposing 
they had 300 boys to deal with, they could afford to give for this 
money a far higher education than a small private school coidd. 
With the feeling that appeared to animate gentlemen in so many 
counties where they were about to commence the formation of 
schools of this sort, the Council of tho Eoyal Agricultural Society 
would be very wrong if they did not lend a helping hand to those 
who so proposed to make personal sacrifices for the sake of the 
farmers of this country. The Council here would not pretend to 
send inspectors to such schools, or go through forms of that descrip- 
tion ; but if papers on agricultural subjects by pupils in the different 
schools were sent up to their professors (who he had reason to 
believe would willingly give their aid), and if to the authors 
of the most deserving papers prizes, — or better still, scholarships 
were awarded, — the examination would give an assurance to the 
farming class that at least the particular school which trained tho 
successful candidate was teaching the boys the elements of what they 
had afterwards to learn practically. It was difficult to know what 
to do with boys between fifteen and twenty years of age; but as 
a rule they did not remain at school after they were seventeen. He 
thought, therefore, that previously to that time the province of the 
school should be to give them as sound and good an education as 
possible ; they would then learn to apply to practice their scientific 
