igences among all classes of the population of this
district will pass through it. No child born in Birmingham,
henceforward, if he have the capacity to profit by the opportunities
offered to him, first in the primary and other schools, and afterward
in the Scientific College, need fail to obtain, not merely the
instruction, but the culture most appropriate to the conditions of his
life.

Within these walls the future employer and the future artisan may
sojourn together for awhile, and carry, through all their lives, the
stamp of the influences then brought to bear upon them. Hence, it is
not beside the mark to remind you that the prosperity of industry
depends not merely upon the improvement of manufacturing processes, not
merely upon the ennobling of the individual character, but upon a third
condition, namely, a clear understanding of the conditions of social
life on the part of both the capitalist and the operative, and their
agreement upon common principles of social action. They must learn
that social phenomena are as much the expression of natural laws as any
others; that no social arrangements can be permanent unless they
harmonize with the requirements of social statics and dynamics; and
that, in the nature of things, there is an arbiter whose decisions
execute themselves.

But this knowledge is only to be obtained by the application of the
methods of investigation adopted in physical researches to the
investigation of the phenomena of society. Hence, I confess I should
like to see one addition made to the excellent scheme of education
propounded for the college, in the shape of provision for the teaching
of sociology. For though we are all agreed that party politics are to
have no place in the instruction of the college; yet in this country,
practically governed as it is now by universal suffrage, every man who
does his duty must exercise political functions. And, if the evils
which are inseparable from the good of political liberty are to be
checked, if the perpetual oscillation of nations between anarchy and
despotism is to be replaced by the steady march of self-restraining
freedom; it will be because men will gradually bring themselves to deal
with political, as they now deal with scientifical questions; to be as
ashamed of undue haste and partisan prejudice in the one case as in the
other; and to believe that the machinery of society is at least as
delicate as that of a spinning-jenny, and as litt