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class of landowners. And, by their purchases, they, in their turn, add to the fund for supplying the labour market, and making public works. Under the system so established, emigration to those colonies,-purchases of land there, the accumulation of wealth, and the general prosperity of the colonies, have taken place at a rapid rate, and to an immense extent. This process is steadily advancing; and its effects as to the future history of our race will probably be stupendous. Although the lands already purchased are of enormous extent, still, as I have shown you, these bear but a small proportion to the practically boundless tracts which remain unalienated, and are waiting to be appropriated by any of Her Majesty's subjects who may choose to acquire them on conditions such as those to which I have referred.

Then the tenure by which these lands are to be held by the purchasers is free and unconditional. The Crown reserves no portion of the right of property or dominium as superior. No feu-duty or quit-rent is payable, except, perhaps, in some districts at the Cape of Good Hope. It is not improbable the experiment of transferring the right to land by indefeasible title may be well adapted to these new countries; and it is no wonder if it has been successful hitherto in Australia.

But I must not detain you with farther details. I shall only add that we and our fellow-subjects are indeed highly favoured by having, in addition to our invaluable social and political privileges, such a vast patrimonial inheritance held for behoof of ourselves individually and of our descendants on such easy conditions.

I just add two qualifying remarks. One is that, looking to what is probably the future destiny of these territories, we should be very cautious against rendering any district within them unfit for the civilisation which is gradually approaching to it, by peopling it with criminal inhabitants. This may, perhaps, be unavoidable; but surely it ought to be the last resource in our system of punishment.

The other is, that although it is the policy, and the sound policy, of this country, to train our colonies to self-government, it does not follow that when any district is constituted a separate province with a local legislature the patrimonial right to the lands which are still unalienated, in such district, and which are now held for behoof of the lieges generally, should be conferred exclusively upon those parties who had previously made purchases of other parts of such district. The rights of all the other subjects of the Crown should remain entire, excepting that those who may afterwards emigrate to and purchase land within the bounds of a territory which has

acquired such a privilege, must of course be subject to the jurisdiction of the governing powers. Grave doubts exist whether this matter has been sufficiently kept in view in the constitutions granted to the Australasian Colonies; and it will require serious consideration in future grants. But ultimately, no doubt, the whole of the land within these territories will be appropriated. And although, looking into the distant future, we may reasonably hope that the inhabitants will be of British descent, we may, notwithstanding, lay our account with their ultimately becoming separate and independent nations-perhaps great empires. Be it so. But in the meanwhile, let us so deal with them, that when they shall, as it were, leave our family, and become independent States, they may ever retain the well-balanced institutions and the christian principles with which we shall endow them, as their best patrimony, -and may also ever retain and exhibit kindly and filial regard for their old mother country.

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Address

BY

NASSAU W. SENIOR,

ON EDUCATION.

T appears to me that the duty of the President of this Department is not so much to state opinions or theories of his own, as to give a general outline of the whole subject. of education, to distribute it into its many subdivisions and cross-divisions, and to endeavour to point out the questions which from their importance, their novelty, or their urgency, most deserve or require your attention.

In its widest sense, the word Education comprehends all the external influences by which the disposition implanted by nature in any animal is subsequently modified. In its narrower sense, the sense in which it is proposed as the subject of your discussions, it is confined to the influences which one person intentionally exercises over another by precept or by example.

These influences are of two kinds:

First, the imparting knowledge, which may be called Teaching. Secondly, the creation of habits, which may be called Training.

Teaching again may be subdivided into two kinds :

First, the statement of facts which can be ascertained only by observation or by testimony. Such are the meaning and the proper pronunciation of words, such is geography, and indeed, such are all the sciences called by the general name of natural history. This kind of teaching Archbishop Whatley has called information.

The second kind of teaching consists of statements, the truth of which is ascertained not by observation but by consciousness, or by inference from the pupil's previous knowledge. Such are all mathematical truths. The mathematician proves the equality of all the radii of a circle, not by measuring them, but by showing that it is involved in the definition of a circle.

The imparting this kind of knowledge Archbishop Whatley has called instruction.

The same statement, addressed to two pupils, may be information to the one who takes it on the testimony of his master, without working out the grounds on which it is founded; and instruction to the other who follows the premises one by one.

The person who has received information feels that he has acquired new facts, depending on testimony, and to be preserved by memory. The person who has received instruction, has not acquired new facts, but has been enabled to perceive new relations between propositions with which he was previously acquainted. He does not believe in them on the mere testimony of his teacher, and recalls them not by an act of memory, but by meditation.

The sciences of which the operations of the human mind. are the principal subject derive their premises principally from consciousness. Such a science is Political Economy. The operations of the human mind in producing, accumulating, buying, and selling, form nine-tenths of its premises. If all men's minds were similar, those premises would be based solely on consciousness. As men's minds differ in detail, though generally similar in their great features, a teacher of Political Economy may sometimes find that in appealing to the consciousness of his pupils, he is arguing on a false premise, the identity of his pupil's consciousness and his own. He is forced, therefore, sometimes to correct his consciousness by observation, and to admit that the conduct, which, if he judged from his own feelings, he would describe as universal, is in fact only general. To this source of error men of the highest genius are peculiarly subject. As their minds are, by the supposition, peculiar, when they judge of others by themselves, they must sometimes judge falsely.

Mr. John Stuart Mill has proposed to escape from this difficulty in Political Economy, by treating that science hypothetically, by defining man as a creature employed solely in the production and accumulation of wealth, and by then explaining how such a being would act and feel. Political Economy so treated would be strict science; as strict as that of logic. Its premises would all rest on consciousness and on definitions; and its conclusions, unless illogical or tinctured by the teacher's peculiarities, could not be denied. As Mr. Mill has not adopted this hypothesis in his great work, I presume that he found on experience that such a treatment of his subject would, from its want of reality and of practical application, be uninteresting.

The second branch of education, Training, that is to say, the creation of habits, may be divided into two kinds,

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bodily training and mental training; and each of these may be subdivided into the training of the faculties and the training of the sensations.

A boy, for instance, may be accustomed to a peculiar use of his bodily faculties by gymnastics or by the acquiring any bodily art, which may be called the training of the bodily faculties, or to submit to or to resist his bodily sensations of cold, heat, fatigue, or hunger, and by that resistance or submission to weaken or strengthen those sensations, which may be called the training of the bodily sensations.

So he may be trained to the use of his mental faculties, such as attention, memory, or imagination, which may be called intellectual training; or he may be trained to resist or to obey in the proper degree his mental sensations of fear, anger, vanity, and the other affections to which we give the name of passions, which may be called moral training.

A synoptic view of education may therefore be thus

drawn up.

Education is divided into teaching and training.

Teaching is divided into the giving information and the giving instruction.

Training is bodily training or mental training.

Bodily training is the training the bodily faculties, or the bodily sensations.

Mental training is the training the mental faculties, which is intellectual training, or training the mental sensations, which is moral training.

I have defined training as the creation of habits; but I have not yet defined the word "habit." It is indeed a word not easy of definition. Most persons in attempting to define it fall into tautology, calling it " an habitual mode of acting or feeling."

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The difficulty is occasioned by a confusion of two words, "custom" and "habit," which are often used as synonymous, though really distinct. They denote, respectively, cause and effect.

The frequent repetition of any act is a custom. The state of mind or of body thereby produced is a habit. The custom forms the habit, and the habit keeps up the custom.

A custom is a continuous stream of similar acts; a habit is the channel which that stream has scooped out. It preserves the custom, as a river is confined by the banks which it has itself created.

The test of the ripening of a custom into a habit is when the customary act is performed spontaneously, or with pleasure, or when its omission has become painful. Aristotle defines the virtues as habits. And he, therefore, holds acts

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