34 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
tion in our prisons, which in the time of Howard were in such an 
awful condition, at the other end of the scale] This is not a 
question for our medical members alone, some of whom have 
recently done us good service in this department ; but as questions 
of political and social economy, of engineering and of architec- 
ture, are all involved, there are rich fields open for our members 
here. 
We have members of the legal profession amongst us • we have 
work left for them to do ; and there is unhappily ample room still 
loft to gain laurels in the field of jurisprudence. We want them 
to help us and themselves, and to help them to obtain for us 
justice, and not law. Surely there may be some amongst us able 
and willing to undertake for this good end. 
Questions of political economy are pressing us on every side. 
There is quite a dearth of practical information. Who will take up 
the questions of free trade, of colonization, emigration, and immi- 
gration ; of strikes, of trades' unions, of poor law administration, 
of sanitation, of municipal government, of land tenure 1 
It has been suggested that the phonograph will supersede the 
necessity for teaching two out of the three R's — reading and 
writing — inasmuch as it will be sufficient to speak to our little 
machine ; and it will write down the words in its own characters, 
and when we want to know them again, we may hear the words 
with our ears, without our using our eyes to see and to read. 
Fancy, what a store of energy will be set free for other enterprises 
yet unthought of, if it really come to this, that we shall no longer 
want to spend a goodly portion of our life in learning to read and 
to write 1 
What next ? It has already been announced that there is a 
probability of being able to see by telegraph ; and again, while 
writing this I have received information from New York that 
Edison has declared that he has solved the only remaining diffi- 
culty in the way of introducing electricity instead of gas for 
lighting, not only public, but also private houses, and so accom- 
plishing the work of our old friend Jonathan Hearder. 
The progress and improvement in the conditions of society 
arising from the application of scientific labours has been so rapid 
that social distinctions are rapidly altering by solution and pre- 
cipitation. 
The artizan of to-day has now always his carriage waiting at his 
