i88 3 .J 
On Technical Education. 
27 
to raise the standard of excellence. If we did so, of course 
there would be fewer amounts of public money to be given 
away; therefore that puts the matter entirely in the hands of 
the Department. Let me say that has been exadlly the 
case with the Science Minutes. I venture to say emphatically 
they have been a brilliant success. The success of those 
Minutes led the Department to see that they might, with 
judicious qualifications, be made stricTly applicable to Art. 
For instance, last year we found that by the bonuses offered 
as prizes in the Science Minutes, a master in the northern 
part of England was earning, upon results, for teaching one 
class only, mechanical drawing I think, £250. The Lord 
President looked about him , and said 1 This is a large sum ; we 
must raise the standard a little , and we can reduce it to £150 or 
£100 ’ ; it is entirely under control .” 
The Lord President of that day showed the value he 
placed on a good teacher by a very extraordinary course of 
proceeding ; I rather think our nobility show their apprecia- 
tion of a good cook or a successful jockey by the reverse 
method. The standard of excellence, it will be observed, 
was not to be raised for the purpose of giving the taught 
better instruction, but for the purpose of cutting down the 
teacher's earnings : as one teacher had earned £250, he and 
all the other teachers of that subject were to suffer pecunia- 
rily for it ; one would rather have thought the proper mode 
of proceeding would have been for the Lord President to 
have sent some competent educationist to see how this ex- 
emplary teacher taught his subject, for this visit might have 
proved as advantageous to the country as the visits of some 
of the roving commissions to continental countries,— and to 
ascertain how many hours a day this excellent teacher gave 
to his work, for that is a point that Sir Henry never seemed 
to have considered. Let us for a moment reflect how a 
commercial establishment would prosper under such a 
system. We will take the case of a large mercantile esta- 
blishment where a large number of salesmen are employed, 
and who are paid solely by the commission they receive on 
the goods they sell : one of these salesmen so well performs 
his duty that he earns a fair, but by no means excessive, 
income ; forthwith, on that account, the partners in the 
concern reduce not only the scale of commission in his case, 
but in the case of all the other salesmen. How would a 
mercantile establishment prosper under such a system ? 
Would not every efficient salesman leave, and would they 
not also advise others not to enter that establishment ? 
Sir Henry stated, on the same occasion, that their system 
d 2 
