Dr. Lyon Playfair has written an interesting letter to Lord
Granville (published in Weduesday's Times) on the want of technical education of our English artisans, and the signs to be seen in the Paris Exhibition of our consequent relative inferiority in the progress of industrial invention during the last five years. Out of ninety classes, he says, there are scarcely a dozen in which pre-eminence is unhesitatingly awarded to us. Not only in the chemical arts, which are Dr. Lyon Playfair's own department, but in the arts of civil and mechanical engineering, the same marked deficiency is to be seen. He ascribes it partly to the want of
schools for technical education. He says that in almost all the cases of good French inventions, it appeared on inquiry that the inventor had been educated in the " Ecole centrale des Arts et Manufactures." Both a chemist and a connoisseur in iron manu- factures wrote to the 7Vmes on Thursday to defend- the English inventiveness, but not apparently with any very great force. The truth we take to be that our artisans are not so much deficient in technical education as in general education. It is the deficiency of our general schools which prevents our operatives winning their way. equally with the artisans of Switzerland and Germany. _ The first great reform we need after the recast of our organic law, is the adoption of a good national system of education.
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