154 
On Technical Education. 
[March, 
VI. ON TECHNICAL EDUCATION. 
By Robert Galloway, M.R.I.A. 
S ECHNICAL Education is still a subject little under- 
stood, not only by the general public, but likewise by 
not a few Members of Parliament, and by some of 
our leading Statesmen: they confuse and jumble together, 
whenever they speak or write on the subject, the technical 
education required by the workman and the technical educa- 
tion required by directors of industries, whether masters 
or managers. We shall discuss these two forms of technical 
education separately, and in doing so we shall not confine 
ourselves to education pure and simple, for the subject 
requires to be treated in a much broader aspect at the pre- 
sent time. We shall have to notice the defective machinery 
we at present have for carrying out technical education ; for 
defective it is admitted to be by the present political chiefs 
of the Education Department, by Members of Parliament, 
by our manufacturers, and by many scientific men, otherwise 
the recent appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire 
into the methods adopted for imparting technical instruction 
in Germany, France, and other continental countries, would 
have no meaning ; the Commission has been appointed 
avowedly to inquire into the systems of technical instruction 
on the Continent, with the object of improving our own. 
Concurrently with the investigation the Commission is 
making, negotiations have been proceeding between the 
Governments of England and France for the ratification of 
a new commercial treaty ; and the difficulty which stands in 
the way of a satisfactory termination of the negotiations is 
due, as most people know, to the excessive import duties 
which the French Government wish to levy on many of our 
manufactured goods, whilst we admit their goods free of 
duty. And it is not alone, as many suppose, on goods that 
require for their production little human skill, but also upon 
manufactured articles that require considerable skill in their 
manufacture. What transpired at the meeting, on the 14th 
of November last, between the silk-weavers and the Under- 
secretary for Foreign Affairs, Sir Charles Dilke, with respeCt 
to the Anglo-French Treaty, affords a very good illustrative 
example. 
Mr. Buckingham, who introduced the Deputation, stated 
that “ the silk trade of Spitalfields was divided into several 
