BUSINESS MANAGEMENT.

We have stated as briefly as the subject admits of, some of the deficiencies of Mechanics’ and similar Institutes, and endeavoured to point out those which it is peculiarly desirable should be supplied. Between those social reforms to be desired, and those that can be achieved, there is in a popularly governed society like our own a great gulf fixed. “So many men, so many minds,” is here the rule. In this country every department of our great national institutions is the result of growth from small beginnings, sometimes of centuries. We do not adopt schemes of improvement suddenly and entire, however desirable the end. So it will be with Adult Education. It would be easy to propose grand schemes of instruction, borrowed from the American or continental models, highly excellent in themselves. But when we are so far in the wake even in the primary instruction of the day school, it is vain to expect that we shall at once recover our way in adult instruction. No proposal will be listened to which does not go upon the basis of existing agencies. Little as some may estimate the Mechanics’ Institutes, they may not be superseded. Whatever interest the people have in their own education, is centered there. They embrace those who best love popular improvement, who have devoted the energies of their life to this work — men who bore the standard of progress during the burden and heat of the day of opposition and of conflict.