These paragraphs constitute the introduction to an _Essay on Education_ which Priestley published in 1764, with the object of drawing attention to the necessity for a reform in our educational system. Although written nearly a century and a half ago, Priestley’s main contention that the education of youth should be directed and adapted to the circumstances and needs of the time in which they live is just as valid now as then, and needs the same insistence. He points out that “the severe and proper discipline” of the Grammar Schools, which are subservient to the Universities, is become a “topic of ridicule.” “This is certainly a call upon us to examine the state of education in this country, and to consider how those years are employed which men pass previous to their entering into the world; for upon this their future behaviour and success must, in a great measure, depend. A transition, which is not easy, can never be made with advantage; and therefore it is certainly our wisdom to contrive that the studies of youth should tend to fit them for the business of manhood; and that the objects of their attention, and turn of thinking in younger life, should not be too remote from the destined employment of their riper years. If this be not attended to they must necessarily be mere novices upon entering the great world, be almost unavoidably embarrassed in their conduct, and, after all the time and experience bestowed upon their education, be indebted to a series of blunders for the most useful knowledge they will ever acquire.” “That man is a friend of his country who observes and endeavours to supply any defects in the methods of educating youth.” At the risk of being called “a projector, a visionary, or whatever anybody pleases,” he proceeds to show “how to fill up with advantage those years which immediately precede a young gentleman’s engaging in those higher spheres of active life in which he is destined to move.” It will be observed that Priestley is not dealing with any scheme of national or universal education adapted to every youth in the community. He is concerned only with the young man who is destined for a station in which his conduct may considerably affect the liberty and the property of his countrymen, and the riches, the strength and the security of his country; and who is within the influence of an honourable ambition to appear as a legislator in the State, or of standing near the helm of affairs and guiding the secret springs of Government—in a word, that class which the universities thought they alone were specially concerned with.