The Sun.
London, England, 1857-09-12 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, SEPT. 12, 1857.

A generation is ordinarily calculated at about
thirty-five years—and Lord BROUGHAM has just
reminded us that precisely thirty-five years have
elapsed since Mechanics' Institutes were first esta-
blished. It is interesting therefore to reflect, in
that ono particular, how much has really been ac-
complished during this last generation. Here,
almost exclusively in the annals of these Mechanics'
Institutes, may bo epitomised the progress made
in the tedious but unceasing struggle of the Eng-
lish People, towards the alluring but illusive day-
dream of National Education. A day-dream which
is still nothing better than a day-dream—save in
as fax as relates to the history of these very in-
stitutions we are speaking of—but a golden vision
which, please GOD, may yet be realised. Our
hopes in this direction have not in any way died
out ; notwithstanding the. deadening influence of
BO many and such bitter disappointments ! Not-
withstanding the frihbling shifts and piecemeal
evasions by which the multitude have been so re-
peatedly and provokingly baulked in their ex-
pectations ! In spite of all this, we still hope,
sooner or later, to witness the attainment of the
advantages we have been striving for so long, and
so pertinaciously. Wo have not lost faith in the
cause—though we have lost faith in the men who
advocated it. A few of its champions, it is true,
yet to this day preserve—because they yet to this
day deserve—the popular confidence. But, alas !
they are, indeed, "few" enough. There 13 Sir
Thomas `NYSE, for example, who began the good-
fight in earnest more than a quarter of a century
ago, and who has only desisted from it 3 continuance
manifestly because of his intense and incessant
pre-occupation during the last sixteen years as
a d iplomatist. llis Excellency may be taken as
a very favourable type of the former advocates of
National Education—in fact he must, as we have
said, be regarded in justice as its originator, as the
originator of the 'l4O-6 Preject which has ever
since proved, unhappily, lime
better than alter-
nately the mirage, and the wild-o'-the-wisp, of our
philanthropists.
Fortunately a new race of charepion4
in the
cause of National Education give promise nowa-
days of reviving under happier auspices the mime_
ment which began so propitiously. Conspicuous
among these later educationists aro, beyond all
manner of doubt, the Nubia Lard the member for
Icing's Lynn, and the Right lion. Baronet the
member for Droitwicb. The former, especially,
the people of England are beginning to look to
with something like the sanguine reliance
placed
of old in Lord Rater RUSSELL—but with far less
probability of having that thickly-blossoming re-
liance fructifying at last, only in the most mise-
rable, acrid, and withered disappointments. The
multitude are looking thus hopefully to Lord
STANLEY, because they already recogni,:ie in the
aspirations of that young and Aagacious Reformer 1

a steady preference for what is practicable, rather
than for what is simply deairakie
rErd fapinatiarg.
The majority see in the NoloteA44lfa matur itlfofs‘
judgment in these partj,culliffs, a 1 beycon4 what
• -
might have been reasonjailpredieted -from ''his
restricted recollections and narrowed experience,
insomuch that, compared with his- views upon
matters relating to a difficult problem like that of
National Education, those of the most sedate and
sober-minded of his competitors in their
advoCacy appear to be certainly crotchetty
—some of them almost wild and visionary,
even the views of a deliberate and
steady-going innovator like Sir JOHN PAKINGTON.
Time can alone prove whether the public are,
after all, in Lord STANLEY'S regard, really in any
way justified in these halcyon expectations. It
should be remembered by that noble lord himself
that they are expectations which devolve upon
hi= a load of a very weighty, and even, in a
manner, almost awful responsibilities. They in-
dicate for him a great future, if he care but to
grasp it manfully ! The hopes of his own rising
age in one grand cause alone—such a cause, for
nstance, as this one of National Education—
placed in his hands confidingly and collectively—
' form of themselves a sufficiently onerous respon-
sibility. Will that responsibility be accepted
frankly by Lord STANLEY—becoming at once a
guide and a spur to his ambition ? li, is a ques-
tion in itself very momentous, and yet one which
he may answer now according to his own free will
and pleasure. There is the opportunity Will
he accept it ? "The ball is at his foot," and the
goal lies straight before him. "The pear is ripe,"
or, at any rate, is fast ripening—a little while,
and he will have but to shake the bough.
In the meantime, while more comprehensive
endeavours are preparing the way for the ulterior
realisation of that favourite day-dream of so many
past and passing statesmen—National Education
—those avant couriers of the Great Measure—
" Mechanics' lustitutes"—still (it rejoices our
heart to know) flourish and multiply.
Reflect what these institutions were a quarter of
a century back, and what they are now ! Recollect
how sparsely they were scattered here and there at
rare intervals over the country, just ten years after
the date of their original commencement—and
how numerous and well-to-do they actually are
nowadays I Formerly, a Mechanics' Institute
was the exception—now it is the rule. Formerly,
it was a curious circumstance to find one of them
existing in a large town, just barely (we use the
word advisedly) existing—now the marvel is to
find anywhere a large town tuithout one, and
without one, too, not merely existing but flourish-
ing. It is certainly to be wished that the ori-
ginal design were more carefully adhered to than
it actually is—that these Mechanics' Institutes
were really Mechanics' Institutes ; establishments
where the students might be rather the wearers
of fustian than the wearers of broadcloth, artiz ins
and handicraftsmen rather than clerks and shop
keepers. But still—while they have been so far
imperceptibly diverted from the course they were
first of all designed to traverse, and to irrigate, so
to speak, with the fertilizing streams of kno
ledge, while they have been so far divart3d from
that course that their very title, in the vast ma-
jority of instances, has actually become a mis-
nomer—Mechanics' Institutes incontestibly do
good service throughout this laud nevertheless.
They not only do good service in the Great cause,
each of them respectively ; but, beyond that,
all of them together afford in their way a substan-
tial guarantee that National Education will yet
in its turn form another of our—lnstitutions !

Dr. LIVINGSTON told the Manchester gentle-
men the other day that a part of Africa, through
which he had passed, abounded with honey, and
that the honey,bird three or four times in the
day called travellers to follow it and to tak3 the
honey ; in consequence of which gratuitous guid-
ance his men, who were travelling with him, ob-
tained a great deal of honey. We think his
hearers might appropriately denominate the Dr.
their cotton-bird, for it can hardly be doubted that
following his guidance, they may obtain all they
want of cotton. The Dr. chirped very cheerfully
and alluringly on Wednesday. Three influential
associations listened to his notes, the Chamber of
Commerce, the Commercial Association, and the
Cotton Supply Association itself. He could
tell them he had man the cotton, so attractive to
the men of Manchester, as certainly as any
honey-bird had seen the product so sweet t 3 the
palate of children, and had seen that it might be
grown and obtained in almost any quantity.
Will not the Manchester manufacturers follow
their cotton-bird

What could they ask more than he points now
to ? He could tell them of districts on the WTe,t
Coast where it grow abundantly and spontane-
ously—of one small district where, by the rude
native growth and manufacture, " 1,300 cloths
were produced annually"—)f another "which,
in the hands of Englishmen, would furnish more,
for its size, than any part of the United States "
—of skilled labour in the same district at 4d ,
and field labour at 21 per day, and if paid for in
oalico, the currant coin of the country, and coin
so easily furnished from the Manchester mint,
at ld. per day I Except, as Miss MARTINEAU
would say, that the market price of labour must
rise through the demand, cotton might
surely be. grown almost for a song. Sambo,
under JONATHAN'S Wave-whip, could never coin
pete with his free brother Negro in Angola, or
on the banks of the Zambesi. No LEGREE in the
Slave States could evo--.Teduce the cost of his slave
labour to a penny or —Nteoiace, or even to four-
pence a day. It must, ' :him that for cat-o%
nine-tails alone. The fertility of the soil t
appears to know no, limits ; manure is never
wanted; the trees are evergreens ; two crops in
the year is the ordinary thing, gram dashing into
your eyes as you ride along ; wheat, in a tropical
country, too., with ears as long as your hand.
In short, the range'of Dr. LIVINGSTON'S travels
offered to Manchester all the cotton she could
need for any extension of her manufacture, cotton-
growers who prefer her calicoes to gold, and valu-
abie products of all kinds in return .for any
amount of manufactures she could pour into the
country.

But why does the great Freo Trade city turn
from Dr. LIVINGSTON to the- Government. we
do not like this tendency of Cotton Spinners to
cry after the eld agricultural fashion, " 01h, Go.
vernment help us 1" Why cannot Manchester help
itself in a matter of c.)tton ? Mr. On.ki'rtrAm re-
ferred to the money spent in seeking a north-west
Passage, but an effort in the interest of science,
whether we think it judicious or not, has nothing
in common -with a commercial adventure. No
individual;
no. class of manufacturers could ever
hope to gain a farthing by determining the
northern outline of the American continent. • He
referred also to the Government Expedition ul )
beat on the
the Niger ; but with the
part -0f7a11;-73antwithstanliog alt the parade with
a failure, and, indeed, owbd ate salve
the expedition was sent on the
twiohnolea'lmost to. the aid of a priyate:, trader
who had anticipated, and really Bunimied 'it.
that Manchtm-
We flay it in Rio spirit of censure,