Page:(Commercial character) The Joseph Fisher lecture in commerce, delivered at the University of Adelaide (IA commercialcharac00jessrich).pdf/7

 ADELAIDE, 11 MAY, 1906.

MR. CHANCELLOR, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,

When your Council did me the honour to ask me to deliver the second of the Fisher lectures, I naturally hesitated, being by no means by way of being a lecturer, and, furthermore, feeling a diffidence in following in the footsteps of one so well qualified by education and commercial experience as Mr. Henry Gyles Turner, who delivered the inaugural lecture. However, succumbing to that so natural feeling that it is so much easier in the majority of cases to say yes than no, so much more difficult to deliver oneself of a negative with more or less truthful reasons in support than of an affirmative prompted by inclination, I decided to stand before this important, but I trust not hypercritical, tribunal, and use my humble endeavours to further the views of my munificent friend, Mr. Joseph Fisher, which are, I understand, to foster commercial education. This same question of education, in the broad and comprehensive sense, is one claiming, and which should claim, a large share of public attention. In these days, when printed knowledge is so condensed and codified, so cheap, so accessible, I, who am little but an item in the commercial world, with a strong natural leaning towards utilitarianism, cannot help entertaining