156 On Technical Education. [March, 
as regards quality or price, with most articles we manufac- 
ture ; and it must be borne in mind that we have placed 
their manufacturers on perfect equality with our own, by 
allowing them to have, duty free, our raw materials (as coal) 
and our unfashioned materials (as crude iron), which they, 
like ourselves, fashion by means of high class labour, into 
articles which enter our country free of duty, whilst ours are 
excluded, or all but excluded, from theirs by heavy import 
duties. It is sometimes alleged, by those who take an unfa- 
vourable view of the skill of our craftsmen, that not a little 
of the excellence of some of our productions is due to 
foreigners being the managers of these industries. But if 
the apprenticeship schools are making the foreign artizan 
superior to our own in every form of handwork, then the 
goods produced, whether as regards quality or price, by the 
combination of foreign workmen and foreign managers, ought 
to surpass those produced by a combination of our own 
artizans and foreign managers, especially as foreign manu- 
facturers have free access to our raw materials, and have the 
command of cheaper labour. 
It must be evident, at least to those who have given 
thought and attention to education, and to British and 
foreign manufactures, that the establishing of technical 
workshop schools in this country, similar to those established 
on the Continent, is not likely to be the best or correct plan 
for improving the technical education of our own artizans. 
They are superior to the foreign artizan in many kinds of 
technical skill ; they require, therefore, an instruction suit- 
able to their needs, as the artizans of foreign countries 
require one suitable for the conditions they are placed in. 
But if anything practical is to follow from the Reports of 
the Royal Commission, the scheme or plan proposed and 
the machinery for carrying it out will require very careful 
consideration. If the plan proposed is a mere copy, it will 
most likely fail ; it is essential, in framing a scheme most 
suitable for English workmen, to consider the advantages 
they possess, as well as the disadvantages they labour under, 
compared with foreign artizans in acquiring technical skill ; 
and the differences in mental aptitude displayed by the two 
classes ought also to be taken into account in its con- 
struction. 
