Suppose that all these things are desirable, what is the best way of obtaining them? I must confess that I have a strong prejudice in favour of carrying out undertakings of this kind, which at first, at any rate, must be to a great extent tentative and experimental, by private effort. I don't believe that the man lives at this present time who is competent to organise a final system of technical education. I believe that all attempts made in that direction must for many years to come be experimental, and that we must get to success through a series of blunders. Now that work is far better performed by private enterprise than in any other way. But there is another method which I think is permissible, and not only permissible but highly recommendable in this case, and that is the method of allowing the locality itself in which any branch of industry is pursued to be its own judge of its own wants, and to tax itself under certain conditions for the purpose of carrying out any scheme of technical education adapted to its needs. I am aware that there are many extreme theorists of the individualist school who hold that all this is very wicked and very wrong, and that by leaving things to themselves they will get right. Well, my experience of the world is that things left to themselves don't get right. I believe it to be sound doctrine that a municipality--and the State itself for that matter--is a corporation existing for the benefit of its members, and that here, as in all other cases, it is for the majority to determine that which is for the good of the whole, and to act upon that. That is the principle which underlies the whole theory of government in this country, and if it is wrong we shall have to go back a long way. But you may ask me, "This process of local taxation can only be carried out under the authority of an Act of Parliament, and do you propose to let any municipality or any local authority have _carte blanche_ in these matters; is the Legislature to allow it to tax the whole body of its members to any extent it pleases and for any purposes it pleases?" I should reply, certainly not.