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18 at School, this critical period is employed by great numbers of young persons in simply getting rid of all they had previously learned. But if the rule were adopted, and generally made known, that the chance of a Government appointment would be given by School Managers to such as could shew that they had endeavoured to retain and add to their school instruction, an inducement to study would be found sufficiently powerfid to act upon some thousands, at all events, of the people, and make them strive both to keep what they had got, and to get what more might be essential.

I will not further weary the Conference by extending my remarks. The plan proposed is, I apprehend, sufficiently before them to enable them to judge how far, consistently with the interests of the Civil Service, it would have the effect of stimulating popular education. As admitted at the commencement of this paper, I have not attempted to advance anything new, either in the way of plan or recommendation: my object has merely been (as the best plans are liable to be forgotten unless constantly kept before the public mind) to seize this opportunity of recalling attention to the suggestions made by Sir C. Trevelyan in 1854—suggestions which, if followed, would I believe exert a very happy influence upon the cause which this Conference has met to promote. I do not indeed, put forward Competition as a grand panacea, which is to extinguish popular ignorance; for undoubtedly in this country a real education of the people can only be effected by the combined action of a great variety of means. Not only Schools, but also churches, chapels, effective preaching, public libraries, newspapers, better dwellings, postal facilities, the possession or the prospect of the franchise—in short all things which are calculated to arouse ambition or awaken curiosity in men—are so many means of extending education. And of such means Competition would be one, and probably no unimportant one. It is true that six hundred prizes annually may seem an insignificant affair amongst the multitudes of our young population; but, if these six