acture in which the cost of the finished article is several
hundred times the price of the materials used to make it, it is skill,
and not the original cost of the material, that determines successful
competition.

We find that all European nations except England, have accepted this
fact as a principle of state, and have founded schools and colleges to
train their industrial population in the knowledge of art and science,
which are the only true foundations of practical skill in an advanced
stage of civilisation. In fact, we in this country have for some years
seen this truth, so far as art is involved, and have established
Schools of Design; but we have forgotten that art in industry is
chiefly used to adorn the productions of science, and have neglected
the latter. What circumstances have happened in the last few years in
the history of the world, that compel an allusion to this neglect in a
speech from the throne?

The marking features of our age are the great economy of time, and the
practical abbreviation of space. Coal and iron are now transported by
other means than by slow-going trains or coast-hugging luggers. Iron
horses, which feed on coal and drink only water, go screaming over the
country at a gigantic pace, dragging with them the whole produce of
coalmines and ironworks. Marine monsters, related to these, plough the
ocean, and scatter our natural riches over the world, receiving in
exchange the produce of other climes. The earth is bound round by
chains, which render geographical distribution arbitrary distinctions,
and enable thought to be reciprocated without being arrested by
distance in space. Blind must be the nation that does not see in all
this an alteration of conditions, which introduce new elements into
the competition of industry. The changes may be summed up in the
remark, that as improved locomotion distributes raw material to all
lands at a very slightly increased cost for the transit, manufacturing
competition among nations is resolved into a race for intellectual
pre-eminence.

This truth is less likely to be speedily acknowledged by us, because
if our native science languishes, we have yet capital to import it;
and we do not see that this is only accelerating our overthrow. But
the relative influence of abundance in raw material, and the
application of science to its development, may be seen by an
illustration from a barbarous country, in which the former is
plentiful, and the latter i