INAUGUKAL ADDRESS. 
87 
on the vital subject of the prosperity of this institution, and to 
invite you to consider the questions that I have propounded. 
Does this institution represent the intellectual condition of Ply- 
mouth? Does this institution progress and flourish in a degree 
corresponding to the forward movement of the intellect of the 
day? 
I have put two questions, but I hope I may assume that they 
may be justly merged into one ; that is to say, that the forward 
movement of the intellect of the day, and the intellectual condition 
of Plymouth may be considered as one and the same thing. I hope 
I may assert with confidence that Plymouth is not behind hand in 
the increasingly rapid advances, year after year, or even month 
after month, which opinion and speculation — research, experiment, 
and conclusion — induction and deduction, with all the various 
forms that mental activity takes, impel the energetic intellects of 
our age to make. 
We must acknowledge a truth, if we desire to take our stand on 
our intellectual position, whether it be favourable or unfavourable 
to us. We are placed in the south-west of England, and doubt- 
less, at the present time, have the peculiar characteristics for which 
the south-west of this country has always been distinguished. 
We are not wealthy. We have not iron ; we have not coal-fields. 
We do not amass material good things in large quantities, as the 
men of the Korth do ; and we hope also, that, as it seems at 
present to be an economical law, that the extreme of poverty 
shall be found in conjunction with the extreme of wealth, we may 
congratulate ourselves that although we are not wealthy, neither 
have we amongst us excessive poverty — not at any rate such dis- 
tressing poverty as may be seen in the great centres of wealth. 
Are we, however, in a position to say, " We admit that we have 
not great material wealth; we rejoice that we have not excessive 
material poverty; but we take great pride in our intellectual 
advancement?" Can we say to ourselves that we have still the 
quality for which s^eet Devon has been famous in history? for 
which the south-west of England has held a proud distinction ? 
Do we still send E-aleighs and Eeynoldses to London, — that great, 
all-absorbing centre, which draws the leading spirits of the world 
by an irresistible centripetal force within itself? 
It is well for us to consider whether, if we cannot supply our 
country with material, we can supply it with intellectual, wealth. 
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