E.—lα.

Councils act unadvisedly when they try to rid themselves of trouble and responsibility by making grants to parish councils for technical education and then leaving them to direct the work. 7 Practical investigations, he proceeded, are urgently required if the operations of agriculture | are to be carried out in a scientific manner. The science of agriculture is, in fact, as yet in its infancy, and can be perfected only by well-arranged experiment. There is room for an immense variety of work. Every substance which the farmer uses, every living organism (plant or animal) with which he is concerned, every operation he conducts, must be thoroughly understood if it is to be employed to the best advantage. Great Britain is singularly behind 8 other | civilised countries in the work of agricultural investigation. The reason has apparently been very simple. In most European countries, and in the United States and Canada, the initiative has been taken by the Government. Ministers, having a just idea of the conditions on which national prosperity depends, have succeeded in obtaining public funds for the support of experiment stations, institutions provided with laboratories and skilled workers, and devoted 9 to the elucidation of agricultural problems. In England agricultural investigation has been | left to private enterprise, which has produced one first-class experiment station —that of Rothamsted—of which we are all rightly proud, but which is wholly inadequate for the growing needs of the country. I am not at this moment advocating the immediate creation of many first-class experiment stations, though there is ample scope for such in the hands of competent workers. One first-class station should certainly be at once started under the 10 immediate control of a reorganized Department of Agriculture. | (b.) At the rate of 120 words per minute. Takes 10 minutes. " What am I ? " is a question we most of us try to answer at some time of our lives, with more or less of success ; and it may be well for you to be helped at college to find the answer, so that when left to yourselves your time and energies may be free for the further questions, " What can Ido ?" and " How can I do it ? " With regard to ethics, I hardly need dwell on the political advantage of its study ; and, as to political economy, the mastery of its principles is an absolute necessity to every man who ventures to term himself a politician. 1 May I say a few words in relation to jurisprudence, and dogmatic as | well as natural theology ? I know not, of course, the connection of your schools one with another, and therefore cannot tell how far the student in one school is expected to ground himself in the special studies of another, but returning to Johnston's definition, no man can be skilled in the science of government, or in the art and practice of administering public affairs, who has not, at any rate, tried to learn what can or should be done in any commonwealth by its laws, and how they should be enforced. And, again, as regards theology, it is a subject of such intense personal and social interest that we are apt to overlook its political importance ; but how, for 2 instance, | can a man ignorant of the distinctive features of the Papal system, or who has not tried to find out what a Roman Catholic believes, come to a true opinion with regard to the conflict between Prince Bismarck and the Pope, which is, in fact, but a fresh campaign in the old war between Church and State? or how can he judge between M. Gambetta and the French Bishops in their educational contest'? And, again, any man who tries to master the present Eastern Question must know why and how the Greek and Roman Churches differ, and what is the meaning of Mahomedanism and the real teaching of the Koran ; and how may a 3 man be fit to take part |in the administration of India to whom Brahminism and Buddhism are meaningless words ? But I might take illustrations much nearer home. Suppose a man utterly ignorant of Scotch Presbyterianism, its doctrines and its history, what would he understand of Scotland, and what chance would he have of dealing successfully with Scotch public affairs ? And yet theological knowledge is not often, I fear, considered necessary by politicians. Of all home questions, the most important by far is that of a State Church, and yet certainly in England, possibly in Scotland, there are many politicians who wish to disestablish and disendow the English or Scottish Churches, and not a few who strive to defend them, without having 4 even attempted to define to | themselves their doctrines and how or why they became churches at all, and who merely consider their relation to the State, without trying to estimate their real raison d'etre. Some of these mental and moral studies may be pursued after scholastic education is finished, though doubtless with far more difficulty ; but with two of your necessary subjects this difficulty is far greater—for many persons, I almost fear, practically insuperable. It is hard to learn logic and the physical sciences without the help of the lecturer or the mental discipline in the class-room. I should be wasting words in dwelling upon the advantage, for 5 my object, of acquiring the art of reasoning, but the political use of the physical | sciences, though not so apparent, is to my mind almost as great. After all, man has to deal with nature as well as with his fellow-creatures; and though much of this contest must be individual, yet in much of it also men bind themselves together and fight and conquer nature in communities and in States, and thus public affairs become to a certain extent scientific affairs. How, for instance, contend with pauperism and crime without ascertaining the conditions of squalor and misery, of which they appear to be the necessary consequences, and if a man be altogether unacquainted with natural science he cannot ascer--6 tain those conditions for himself; he must take them second-hand from an expert. He not | only has to ask the chymist or the physiologist to explain to him the laws of nature which he has to enforce; that, under ordinary circumstances, if he be wise, he will always do; but he cannot even read these laws ; they are to him a dead language. Again, education is, and must for long continue to be, a political subject; not only what elementary education the State must encourage and enforce, but in what manner it should assist or try to improve secondary schools and even universities. A committee of politicians

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