Lord Hartington made a striking speech last night to the Polytechnic Young Men's Christian Institute. In the presence of such an audience a text was perhaps needed, and he took as his text some remarks made by Professor Huxley, who lately pointed out the instructive likeness between warfare and industry. If we are well advised--and Lord Hartington has no misgivings on the subject--in spending freely to protect ourselves against aggression, it is equally our duty to be not niggardly in providing industrial education, and diffusing scientific knowledge. It is the condition of industrial supremacy, and it is not an unattainable condition. A Watt or even an Edison is born, not made. But the knowledge of drawing, mechanics, mathematics, and chemistry, and other sciences or arts, which aid the artisan in his daily work, may be imparted, and on the spread of such knowledge may depend the continuance of industrial supremacy. Great commanders cannot be called into being; but in the main it depends on the rank and file of the army of industry whether its battles are lost or won. How is the work to be accomplished? In answer to this question Lord Hartington let fall one or two remarks which, though not offering a complete solution, are, if we mistake not, likely to be fruitful in consequences. The State, he is satisfied, cannot do all or much; and he is struck with the inability of purely voluntary efforts to meet the demand. He finds the necessary assistance, if anywhere, in our municipal institutions. "I hope the time is not far distant when our town councils or local governing bodies will establish in every considerable centre industrial and technical schools, suitable to the wants of the district, and supported out of local funds." The institutions which now imperfectly do the work of diffusing technical instruction "are playing the same part in relation to technical and industrial education that was played by the voluntary schools in relation to elementary education." This points to a national system of technical education; it is the largest and clearest conception of the subject which any public man of importance has put forth. THE FIRST "GUILLOTINE" CLOSURE (1887). =Source.=--_Hansard_, Third Series, vol. 315, col. 1674, June 10. Ordered: That at ten o'clock p.m. on Friday, the 17th day of June, if the Criminal Law Amendment (Ireland) Bill be not previously reported from the Committee of the whole House, the Chairman shall put forthwith the Question or Questions on any amendment or motion already proposed from the Chair. He shall next proceed and successively put forthwith the Question that any clause then under consideration, and each remaining clause in the Bill, stand part of the Bill, unless progress be moved as hereinafter provided. After the clauses are disposed of, he shall forthwith report the Bill, as amended, to the House.