its
examinations and result fees--all leading to the multiplication of
clerks and professional men, and preventing us from turning the thoughts
and energies of the people towards productive occupations.

The natural trend of our educational policy will now be clear. Leaving
out of account large towns, where our problem is, as I have said, the
same as that which confronts the industrial classes in the manufacturing
centres of Great Britain, we are chiefly concerned with the application
of science to the cultivation of the soil and the improvement of live
stock, and of business principles to the commercial side of farming;
with the teaching of dairying, horticulture, apiculture, and what has
been called farm-yard lore, outside the rural home, and with domestic
economy inside. On the industrial as distinct from the agricultural side
of the work in rural localities, technical instruction must be directed
towards the development of subsidiary rural industries.

We early came to the conclusion that we could not expect to find a
system which we could simply transplant from some other country. The
system adopted in Great Britain, where each county or group of counties
maintains an agricultural college and an experimental farm, and many
more elaborate systems on the continent, were all found on examination
to be inapplicable to our own rural conditions, unsuitable to the
national character, and unrelated to the history of our agriculture.
Many of these schemes might have turned out a few highly qualified
authorities on the theory of agriculture, and even good practical
directors for those who farm on a large scale. But we are dealing with a
country with great possibilities from an agricultural point of view, but
where, nevertheless, agriculture in many parts is in a very backward
condition, and where it is probably safe to say that three-fifths of the
farms are crowded on one-fourth of the land. We are dealing with a
community with whom the systems of elementary, secondary and higher
education have not tended to prepare the student for agricultural
pursuits. A system of agricultural and domestic education suited to the
wants of those who are to farm the land must recognise and foster the
new spirit of self-help and hope which is springing up in the country,
and must be made so interesting as to become a serious rival to the race
meeting and the public-house. The daily drudgery of farm work must be
counteracted by the ambition