Mr. Balfour can make even a speech on technical education
interesting, which is not a common feat even amongst our ablest statesmen. In giving away the prizes to the successful students of the Municipal Technical School at Manchester, on Monday, he called attention to the fact that, in the first instance, theoretical discovery usually follows practical dis- covery, as, for instance, our progress in the science of thermo- dynamics was in great measure due to Watt's discoveries of the steam-engine and of the great fields of labour in which it could be successfully applied. But at a certain point in the progress of these sciences, theoretical greatly outstrips practical knowledge,—as, for instance, in the case of our modern electrical discoveries, which have been really due, not to practical genius, but to a fuller mastery of the principles of the science itself ; and where this happens, no mere ability in practical workmanship, such as our English artisans have long possessed in a much higher degree than those of the Continent, can make up for deficiency in that scientific school- training in which the Germans and Swiss have lately advanced far more rapidly than ourselves. The practical inference, of course, was that if English manufactures were to retain their front place in the competition of the world, our artisans must be as carefully grounded in the technical science of their work as those of Germany and Switzerland.
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