portant. A minister of justice; a code; if not a code a codification of certain portions of the law; a system of procedure; a complete jury system; a court of appeal; a reconstruction of our tribunals; a simplification (on the Australian plan, which we owe to Sir Robert Torrens) of land transfer these are all measures to which I am quite content to be considered pledged-pledged in this sense, that I have for years thought them desirable; that, as to some of them, I am now ready; as to others, if I saw any chance of success, I could get ready to bring them forward. But it would be the idlest vanity, the grossest dishonesty, to lead you to believe that there is any probability of my being able to deal with many of them. It is so easy for men who have no responsibility, and who do not see the working of the machine, to say that this can be done, and that can be carried, and the other can be made law. I wish they had to try. In this country, to carry any large and complicated measure, you require a great force of public opinion and great public interest. On this subject effective political leverage has yet to be created. Take the subject of legal education. It is an important and interesting one. Nothing, or next to nothing, is now done for it. The Inns of Court, with their great incomes and unequalled advantages, have touched the subject but feebly and slightly. It is taken up in the House of Commons by Sir Roundell Palmer, a man whose position in the House is unique, whose personal weight and influence is enormous, whose eloquence invests with interest everything he takes up. There was full notice of his motion, and the House was barely kept up to its complement of forty members during his speech and the subsequent discussion. What is the use of railing against the Attorney-General in the face of a fact like this? Mr. Vernon Harcourt, a very able man and a popular speaker, takes up the subject of Law Reform, and but for the life unexpectedly thrown into the debate by a most vigorous and uncompromising speech, enough to stir up any House, made by my excellent colleague, the Solicitor-General, that debate too would have languished and collapsed. Mr. Vernon Harcourt spoke as ably on this subject as upon the Ballot, but his speeches on the Ballot were made to Houses inconveniently full, his speech on Law Reform was made to empty benches. Neither the Government nor the Attorney-General have anything to say to this result. It arises simply from the fact that one subject interests the House and the other does not.

Take the case of the Jury Bill. There is a matter which does excite some public interest, for multitudes, if not classes,

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are annoyed and oppressed by the present law. through a select committee, and was pressed forward with such powers and influence as I possess. It was thrown over (and I admit the necessity) in favour of measures of greater political interest, and which both sides of the House were far more eager to discuss. The truth is, law grievances, though they exist, and are quite undeniable, are not grievances which touch either multitudes or classes. How few men, taking England through, ever go to law at all. How very few go often. How very few indeed ever get so far as an appeal to the House of Lords. Of those who do, the great majority are thankful to have it over; they know nothing of their fellow-sufferers; they are too glad to get them gone, and to hope that they may never hear the name of law again. I do not say this to deny or to extenuate the grievance. But it is only manly and honest to state plainly the common sense of the matter, and to point out what surely is a simple fact, that nothing great and complicated can be done in a popular Government without a strong pressure of popular opinion, and that there exist divers reasons why, partly from ignorance, partly from a happy inexperience, the feeling of the great mass of the people is not awakened on this subject.

It is also to be remembered that the session of Parliament is limited, that the time at the disposal of the Government is limited; and that the absolutely necessary business of the country-I mean Supply and other essential business-takes up most of the time of which the Government has the command. More and more the time of the House of Commons is not only consumed, but wasted, not by business, but by debates on all kinds of subjects, which too often begin in nothing and end in nothing but a large consumption of time. Besides, a Government becomes pledged in character and honour to certain measures which it is then a political necessity to bring forward. I speak without any special information, but it seems to me that Irish Education, Public Health, and Local Burdens, are matters which it is impossible the Government should not bring forward next session. The questions arising upon the subject of Local Taxation alone afford, if thoroughly dealt with, materials for a session by themselves. I leave you, and all candid men, to judge what is the chance of any great and disputed measure in the House of Commons, in 1873, if these subjects should be undertaken by the Government. All I can promise is to do my best to leave no opportunity unimproved, and to seize every chance to advance one or more of the measures which I have recommended to you to

day. One thing I will not do. I will not bring forward measures I have no chance of passing, and I will not be guilty of what I think the utter littleness of making speeches for the sake of a spurious popularity, which can only take up valuable time, and end in nothing.

One word, and I have done. You, and all of us, have it in your power to do something to turn the public apathy on law reform into active and hearty sympathy. Let me urge you to do what you can. See very clearly what is the mischief you would remove. Do not suffer vague and rhetorical phrases to stand in the place of practical knowledge. See very clearly also what is the practical remedy you would propose. The mischief and the remedy being thus clear to your own minds, it is not very hard to make them clear to others. So, and so only, you can really help those in Parliament who are in earnest in the matter. And when law reforms are carried, as sooner or later they certainly will be, the credit of them will be due not so much to those who have sailed upon the current, as to those who have created its volume, and directed its flow. Forgive me that I have so long detained you, and forgive me that I have detained you with what has so ill occupied your time.

Address

BY

GEORGE WOODYATT HASTINGS,

ON

EDUCATION.

IT

T was with great reluctance that I accepted the honour urged upon me of presiding over the Department of Education at this Congress. It had been my intention, in the address which, as the President of your Council, it is my customary duty to deliver, to ask your consideration of more than one of the topics discussed at the recent International Congress on Prison Discipline, and also of some questions concerning which the Association has been busy, I trust not without utility, during the past year. These would have been matters on which I could have spoken with some assurance of usefulness, because on some of them, at any rate, I may venture to claim the qualification of special knowledge. But in dealing with my present subject such confidence is wanting to me. I have had no personal experience in the work of education, and I feel only too strongly that there are many here from whom I would gladly learn, and whom I could not, either now or at any time, presume to teach. But without attempting to range over the wide field allotted to the Department, I will endeavour to say a few words on some matters which circumstances have brought under my own consideration, or in which the Association has shown some special interest.

Confining the word to its popular, though incorrect, sense, all education consists of two parts: teaching and testing the acquisition of what has been taught. These conjoint functions are discharged in the highest way by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which have always furnished the educational standard of the nation. They also add to them a third function, that of attesting the qualifications of those they have examined by the granting of degrees. The University of London, on the

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contrary, has never undertaken the function of teaching: it simply examines; but as it exacts a higher standard than any other university in the kingdom, perhaps in the world, its degrees have a proportionate intellectual value. The test it imposes even on entrance is so high that a matriculated student of London has much of the position of an ordinary graduate in other universities, and this preliminary examination has had an important effect in raising the standard of education in schools. Now, it is evident that the utility of these great bodies, standing at the head of the national education, must be in proportion as they are truly national in their character, as they embrace all classes, as their influence permeates all districts, as they enter into and colour the character of the national life. is the glory of the University of London that its work, though limited as I have said in its nature, has from the first been comprehensive in its policy; no cloud of sectarianism has dimmed the lamp of its learning, nor have its honours been ever degraded by privilege. Its examination rooms are open to all of every rank, creed, and race, wherever educated, whether in schools, colleges, or private houses, and its degrees are granted solely as the rewards of a merit rigidly scrutinized. It might seem that these words only describe the necessary conditions of a great university, and yet it is a fact that when, not thirty years since, I matriculated at Cambridge, not one of them could have applied either to that University or to Oxford, and that all of them do not apply even now. By slow degrees the barriers of exclusiveness have been broken down, and it is marvellous now to look back and remember the pertinacity with which they were defended as just and necessary. It is within a very recent period that the full privileges of graduates and the emoluments of college fellowships have been thrown open without respect to theological differences; but it is only fair to the universities to say that the religious tests, now happily abolished, were not obstacles raised by themselves at their own gates, but were legislative fetters imposed on them by Parliament, and removed at the instance of an agitation commenced by university graduates. Various internal changes, all tending in a liberal direction, have been made for many years by the governing bodies. The curriculum of studies has been enlarged, and the natural and political sciences have been duly recognised. Fellowships and scholarships have been thrown open, and in various respects air and light have been let into the oldfashioned ways of university life. By recent changes undergraduates can now enter both at Oxford and Cambridge, and pass through the whole course of study, without necessarily