The Duke of Devonshire has been making a series of
education speeches in Birmingham, where he stayed for two or three days with Mr. Chamberlain at Highbury. Yesterday week he opened the newly completed Municipal Technical School there, of which we gave a brief account in our last issue. The Mayor, in welcoming the Duke, protested strongly against the recommendation of the recent Commission on Secondary Education that the Municipal Council should elect only one-third of the Committee of such schools, and that a part of the grant given by the Government to such schools should not be left at the disposal of the Municipal Council, which had started and erected the school; and this portion of the Mayor's speech was subsequently strongly endorsed by Mr. Chamberlain. In the case of such a municipality as Bir- mingham, which is both rich and proud of its great public institutions, this protest no doubt may be wise, for the Municipal Council of such a town may be trusted to take the best advice in electing its Committee, so as to do the utmost for its own welfare and its great school's success. But we are not at all sure that the same confidence could be felt as to the Municipal Councils of smaller and poorer places; and we think there is too little humility about local feeling in many a locality where the local mind is by no means well-informed- The next best quality to alacrity to discern your own true interests is alacrity to discern that you are not able to discern them without adventitious help, and are not even the best possible judge of what that adventitious help should be. And this is unfortunately a kind of humility in which local feeling is sometimes exceedingly deficient.
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