Mr. Frederic Harrison took the chair at the annual meeting
of the Social and Political Education League, in the Holborn Town Hall on Wednesday, and delivered a warm enlogium on the principle that all the lectures of the League should be gratuitous. His chief reason was that a paid lecturer was very apt to attempt to amuse rather than to instruct ; but that, we fear, is frequently the case even with unpaid lecturers. No one would expect a lecturer on physics or chemistry to teach for nothing, and the only reason why gratuitous political lectures are better than paid political lectures, is that there is, as yet, so little of established scientific truth in political philo- sophy, that paid lectures might easily be a premium on buncombe. It is no however, one in three, even of unpaid lecturers, who would come up to Mr. Frederic Harrison's ideal of the unpaid lecturer whose lectures should be a " course of self-education," and who should "lay bare" his own mind to public view, and appeal to his hearers to judge "if one's educa- tion bad been of any good worth speaking of." We fear that the opinions of very few audiences would be "of any good worth speaking of " on a question of that kind.
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