MARQUIS OF RTPON : ADDRESS. 
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up throughout the land, upon a uniform system, aud directed from 
a central department — (hear, hear) — and who thought that any- 
thing that fell short of that was not worthy of the name of a 
national system of education. He was bound to say that he did 
not share that view. He did not believe that State interference 
with education was a good thing in itself. He believed that it was 
a necessary thing in certain cases — for instance, in primary educa- 
tion. But he said that it was on the whole, undoubtedly desirable 
to confine it within narrow limits, and to avoid having recourse to 
the State in these matters, wherever it could be avoided, and es- 
pecially it seemed to him that this was the true principle in respect 
to the pursuit of the physical and natural sciences. As they all 
knew, those physical and natural sciences had been for a long time, 
and were now, in so constantly progressive a state that it was 
essential, as he believed, in order to ensure their satisfactory ad- 
vance, that they should enjoy the utmost possible amount of free- 
dom. Now, the science which a Government could undertake to 
teach would always be, in a highly progressive state of things, just 
a little behind the foremost teaching of the day. He had no doubt 
that any Government department would always desire to place the 
control of scientific education, if it undertook the duty, in the hands 
of the most eminent scientific men of the time — that was to say, in 
the hands of the most eminent scientific men of the time when the 
appointments of those gentlemen were made. But in a few years — 
in some cases it might be a much shorter period, or he was much 
mistaken — the men so appointed would be in many respects passed 
by younger competitors. Their views would have, before long, 
become in many respects out of date, and yet no Government who 
had appointed men of that eminence could venture to remove them. 
He would not refer — -it would be quite unbecoming to do so — to 
any examples of this kind ; but he could not help thinking that 
some of the scientific gentlemen who were present could put the 
cap upon heads that it would fit, and must in their recollection 
know very well that the danger that he had alluded to was not im- 
aginary and might have easily arisen during the last ten or fifteen 
