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directed away from the real issue namely, whether the candidate at the moment before them is the most fit and proper person available to represent their interests and serve them in whatever position he may happen to covet. I repeat that any deed which, in a fair view, would make part of his qualification or disqualification may rightly be raked up. But the educational influence of public conflicts must remain small so long as party or personal victories are won not by reasoning but by vituperation. Unfortunately the evil from an educational point of view is not solely negative; it is positive also; and the mind of the people is not merely left untrained as to right thinking and right feeling, but an appetite is created for garbage, an appetite which grows by what it feeds on, and like the craving for alcohol, not only cries ever more, more,' but destroys the desire for, and the power of assimilating, wholesome food. It is impossible to conceive anything more degrading to a people, than to be fed on slander, and amused by virulent and defaming contests compared with which gladiatorial exhibitions are civilized and bull fights ennobling.

The lesser evils which follow the argument from scandal will appear more practical. Public offenders are allowed to go unexposed, because the tactical time has not come to strike, and month adds itself to month and year to year, and the public are allowed to listen to the wild and unscrupulous utterances of a contemptible demagogue, whose game should have been spoiled long before. This course is one that would be deemed unworthy by those who feel that a real claim to public trust, on the ground of ability and faithfulness, is the only basis on which a man should care to stand.

When a case arises where it is a duty to expose the conduct of an aspirant, then the force of the statement is impaired by suspicion of want of good faith. So that the argument from scandal, when resorted to as a matter

of course, has this double drawback, it leads sometimes to the rejection of a a good man, and this happening once or twice makes it difficult to defeat a really bad one, whose character should entirely shut him out from confidence. We want not merely greatness but goodness in our public men, not merely ability but morality, and if the object of the professors of billingsgate was to secure this, whatever might be said of the means they employ, their motive would at all events be respectable. But we may be sure no favour would have more reason to dread the reproduction here of the censor of the old Romans than those who, hired with money or maddened by envy, rush out from the kennels of party, howling defaming mendacities.

The most serious of all the prac tical evils which follow from the tone of public discussions, is that highminded, able, but sensitive men are kept out of public life, thus allowing people of inferior stamp to crowd into it

-a circumstance which has many and far-reaching consequences, including lowness of tone which, however, is by no means the gravest result. When people without intellectual power go into public life, they very soon learn that they have no career, and the possibilities of their future having no bracing influence on them, in nine cases out of ten, they determine to make pclitics pay. But in the case of a man of real ability, where avarice is not as it sometimes is, though happily not often, his master passion, the public have in his hopes and promise hostages for his good behaviour. His greatest desire will not be 'to have a nice thing,' to add house to house and field to field, but will be in accordance with that which has inspired so many lives that are among the noblest monuments of human sacrifice and endurance and greatness the generous ambition to hold a large place in the consideration of his countrymen, because of services which were not only efficient in a coarse direct sense, but

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also elevating to public life, and it may be at the same time tending to expand and enrich human thought. When a man of poor intellect is sent to parliament or raised to power, in case he degenerates into a voting machine and depresses the parliamentary standard, or perpetrates rhetorical and legislative escapades, wholly inconsistent with his duty and the efficiency of the legislature; in the other case he becomes a mere medium and the public have an ostensible minister without power, and a real minister without responsibility. History then repeats itself, and the roi fainéant and the maire du palais are revived. The public, therefore, want and should obtain, not merely men who can vote, but who can also deliberate, and who cannot only deliberate, but can say 'no, a thousand times no!' when asked by whomsoever to support sop measures and bribing expedients, injurious in a two-fold sense to the country, striking at its honour and its purse.

There is indeed abundant need for seeking to raise the tone of public life, and it is to be hoped that the next Local House will be an improvement on its predecessor. Probably every one has had an experience more or less like this. Entering Osgoode Hall one morning, I said to a legal friend— 'I suppose Blank is to be one of the judges.' 'I dare say' was the reply. 'He will be better on the bench, in fact he is too honest for a politician,' and the prevailing tone in which politicians are spoken of is like that one would use in speaking of a band of sbirri. Chatting with two legislators of opposing parties, I discussed a measure on which I thought public money had been thrown away. They agreed with me. Why then' I asked 'did you both vote for it?'' Because,' answered one, 'I had my own axe to grind.' And I,' replied the other,

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'was afraid I should offend some of my friends,' and each honourable gentleman laughed complacently as though conscious of having acted exceedingly well. Such are your practical politicians,' who to borrow the language of Lord Lytton, know the world and take it as it is, do not ask five legs of mutton from a sheep, and are determined that no modern cynic, lantern in hand, and bent on an arduous search, shall find them.

But why dwell on a state of things which all acknowledge and deplore? The only course worth taking is to point out the remedy, though there may be little hope of its adoption by the people, for the ancients well said, one may show to others, but cannot pluck for them the Hesperian fruit. The true remedy is to introduce into our discussions the element of criticism and a higher class of men into public life, and this can never be done largely and successfully while the chosen weapon in the political struggle is, not the sword of reason, used in accordance with honourable rules of fence, but the tomahawk of scandal wielded from ambush with savage recklessness, and from motives of the basest kind. History near and remote teems with illustrations of the dangers which attend distaste, on the part of the best citizens, for public life, a distaste which is the inevitable consequence of making that life loathsome by excluding from it all that elevates man in his own and his fellows' esteem, and by making it a terror to the sensitive and refined.

The present time is eminently favourable to a new start, for there is abroad

especially is this true of the young men-the backbone of the country of to-morrow a feeling that our feet are touching larger years, a generous and wise desire to pour oblivion over what was unsatisfactory in the past, and to greet the future with untroubled memories and noble purpose.

ART EDUCATION-A PLEA FOR THE ARTIZAN.

ΟΝ

BY L. R. O'BRIEN,

Vice-President of the Ontario Society of Artists.

N the 5th of February last there was an important gathering in Washington, being the annual meeting of the Educational Association of the United States. At this meeting Professor Walter Smith, state director of Art Education in Massachusetts, read an able and very interesting paper on Technical Education,' which has since been published, after which the following resolution was passed unanimously

'Whereas this Convention of state, county and city superintendents of schools recognises the necessity of industrial education in the public schools of America; and whereas, if a part of the time now given to writing in day schools were devoted to drawing, the writing would be better, and the power of drawing a clear gain, therefore,

Resolved, That industrial drawing, consisting of geometrical drawing, freehand drawing, elementary design, being now regarded as the common basis of technical education, should be taught in the public day schools as an elementary part of all general education; and that industrial drawing, modelling, and applied design for trades and manufactures, should be taught to persons of both sexes in free evening classes for those who are not in attendance at day schools.'

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the purse power of the legislatures and school trustees; and, secondly, that it is a unanimous and formal acceptance of a revolution in the whole plan of education, which has, for some years and against strong opposition, been quietly progressing.

If in this article reference is principally made to the course of education now being adopted in the United States, it is because the circumstances of that country, its opportunities, its requirements, and its educational machinery, are so like ours that its action affords us an apter exemplification, and more useful illustration, than that of any other; besides which, from its contiguity the United States must always be our great industrial competitor, and industrial progress there can only be met by a corresponding development here.

Forordinary purposes, technical education, practical education, art education, mean the same thing. The ordinary conception of art is something far removed from its true signification: to wit,-Application of knowledge to practical purposes '-' power of doing things acquired by experience, study, or observation.'

Advocacy of Art Education does not mean that people should be taught or incited to make pictures or statues, but that they should be fitted for whatever they may have to do of practical work in after life, and that they should be trained not only to acquire knowledge, but to apply it to practical purposes. Drawing is the foundation of practical education, as reading and writing are of a literary education,

and it is the only universal language. To draw anything we must study it with a purpose and thus come to know the thing itself-reading only tells us something about it. Make a careful drawing of a fuschia or geranium and you will know more about plant form than could be learned from volumes of botany without illustrations. In a recent address upon this subject the necessary fundamental branches of education are put thus:

'There are now four fundamental studies required to fit children for practical life, namely:

1. Reading, because it is the means of teaching and acquiring knowledge. 2. Writing, because it is the means of expressing knowledge.

3. Arithmetic, because it is the means of computing knowledge and values; and

4. Drawing, because it is the language of form in every branch of industry, from the most simple to the most complex.'

As our schools are paid for by a general tax, and are intended for the use of all the people, it is essential that the interests of no important class should be ignored, and knowing what must be the occupations of the great majority of the scholars in adult life the scheme of instruction should be so arranged as to prepare for them; and further, as necessity compels a large number of children to leave school and go to work at an early age, the instruction given in the first stages should be complete as far as it goes, and be such as can be put in use at once and before it is forgotten.

I have no wish to undervalue the popular education of the day, for in the direction in which it goes, as literary education, it is admirable. The teachers are experts in teaching, their system is very good, and their manner and enthusiasm in carrying it out are be yond all praise. If the children of to-day fail in acquiring knowledge, it is because they lack the time, inclin

ation, or power to take in and assimilate what is so well set before them, or perhaps because the process is so thorough and elaborate that the poor little brains get addled in going through the mill; but, granting all this, does our much vaunted and costly free education fit the children for the occupations that most of them have to follow as soon as they leave school? Does it interest them in those occupations, and cultivate the faculties and perceptions upon which they most chiefly rely for success? We must frankly admit that, with the largest number and with the most important class, the workers with their hands, it does not. That it fails in this respect, and that it tends to make the pupils despise manual labour and endeavour by all means to escape it, is admitted and regretted by some of the ablest teachers.

The child of the red Indian is better educated for his future life than our children are for theirs. Every sense and faculty that he requires to use is trained and cultivated to the utmost keenness; fleet of foot and strong of arm, with a true eye and certain hand, versed in the ways of birds, and beasts, and fishes, knowing the signs of nature in the sky and in the woods, and delighting in his knowledge; having learned to see things and to do things, he is for his place perfectly educated. Can we not in some degree follow this example? Do we not owe it as a duty to the working man, whose hands are his sole patrimony, to give him the kind of education that will help him to do his work skilfully and well, so that his trained intelligence may find legitimate scope in bringing to perfection all that he does, and that he may hope to rise by excellence in his work, rather than by shirking it to seek for some easier mode of living or advancement?

We see every day the brightest and most intelligent of our youths, those who have profited most by their edu cation, leaving the ranks of productive industry, deserting the workshop or

the farm, to become schoolmasters, shopkeepers, bookkeepers, anything where they think they can use their heads rather than their hands, and failing because there is nothing for them to do. For hard labour they have no aptitude, for skilled labour they have no skill, the manliness has been educated out of them, and they have no weapon to use in the battle of life but the pen, which is in most hands a feebler instrument than even the sewing girl's needle. Is it surprising that our cities are crowded with useless, starving, well-educated men, who`cannot dig and are ashamed to beg?

The working man is now so sought after, and flattered and befooled by politicians and demagogues for the -sake of his vote, that we are apt to think of him as having been really and largely benefited by the gift of the franchise, instead of having been mocked by the vision which he took for a substantial boon. Artizans also get less sympathy from their employers, and less general sympathy from the public, than their hardships should entitle them to, because they cannot themselves move for improvement of their position without combination, and in combination they do not seem able to act without putting themselves in the wrong, or at least without much inconvenience and annoyance to the public. The rich have the power still, as they always have had it, and having the power it behoves them to use it in all possible alleviation of the condition of the poor, and in wise and kindly attention to their just aspirations.

It is worth our while to consider what is the present position of the working classes, with respect to their work, and how it has come about.

The 'hard times' which press so unpleasantly upon us just now have some remarkable and paradoxical features which seem to indicate that inequality in the distribution of wealth is one great evil we have to contend with. Everything required for the supply of man's material wants is in an abund

ance-food for man and beast is cheap and plentiful-every kind of raw material, animal, vegetable and mineral, is in profuse supply. All manufac tured products are abundant, superabundant and cheap. Money accumulates in the coffers of the bankers, and with all this there is wide-spread distress, poverty and steadily increasing pauperism. The rich have grown richer and the poor are growing poorer. Colossal fortunes stand more than ever conspicuous among populations suffering from insufficient employment and revolving the most startling social and communistic theories. If we have suffered less in Canada from these evils than older countries have, we may well be thankful, but the outlook over the world at large is grave enough and is the more serious as affording little present prospect of relief.

The extent to which machinery has taken the place of hand labour is evidently one of the causes both of this distress of the poor and of the accumulation of capital in a few hands. It is within a very short period, scarcely more than one generation, that this wonderful introduction of machinery has taken place. Machines at first used as aids to the labourer, doing heavy work beyond his power to attempt, such as pumping mines, drawing loads and lifting weights, have by degrees been so perfected as to supplant him in the finest and most delicate operations, beating him in regularity, in precision, and above all in rapidity and cheapness of production. It is little wonder that the instinct of the workmen has been so bitterly hostile to machinery--they had nothing but their labour to live by, and the machines were invented avowedly to do their work and do it cheaper. The steam engine is to the artizan of the nineteenth century what the Chinaman is to the white labourer of the Pacific Coast, but a far more powerful rival. You may keep out the Chinese or send them back to the flowery land, but the steam engine is hopelessly domesticat

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