1883.] On Technical Education . 601 
question, let me ask our Statesmen who are responsible for 
the Education estimates our Senators who vote the 
money, and the tax-payers who pay it, what benefits they 
expeft the nation will derive from this Science teaching ? 
If they take as their authorities on the subjedt those who 
are pecuniarily interested in maintaining the present system 
unaltered, a long list of benefits to be derived will be set 
forth ; but in passing allow me to remark it is still expecta- 
tion , not realisation ; the Organising Science Master, for 
instance, narrates a long list in his autumnal peregrinations 
through the country : he has been for the last year or two 
expatiating largely on the benefits our greatest industry, 
Agriculture, will derive from the Science teachers’ instruc- 
tions in the Agricultural Districts. The Lords of the Privy 
Council have been recently promising requisionists that 
Hygiene shall be added to the subjects taught : the Lords 
may promise, but where are the performers ? Is the costly 
Department of Science and Art, unaltered and unimproved, 
to be continued the agent in the future for improving and 
extending the teaching in Pure and Applied Science, and to 
be depended upon for making the scientific education in 
England equal to that of Germany, and other countries 
more advanced than our own, in that branch of instruction 
at the present time ? The Department cannot claim to have 
accomplished this in the past or the present, for they are 
still sending out Commissions — in addition to other inde- 
pendent, or nominally independent, Commissions — to conti- 
nental countries to learn how it is to be accomplished. 
Numerous letters are at present appearing in one of the 
London newspapers on the question “ What are we to do 
with our Boys ? The question came to be discussed by 
reason of an advertisement appearing for a clerk at a salary 
of £30 a year. This salary is thought by the writers of the 
letters as far too small, even for a commencement ; but, small 
as it is, it is equal to the earnings of many of the Science 
teachers, and it is superior to the average payment per 
teacher, and the situation is preferable to that of the Science 
teacher in most other respeCts — the salary is secure ; the 
clerk knows the exaCt day he will be paid ; he will not have 
to wait nearly a year before he has a chance of receiving his 
small stipend ; he has not to spend any of his leisure hours 
in preparing himself by study for his daily work ; he has not 
to expend any of his small salary in purchasing books to fit 
him for and keep him abreast of his daily labour ; he has 
not to work from 10 a.m. till 10 p.m. to earn his salary : 
VOL, V. (THIRD SERIES). 3 R 
