This transformation has been brought about by the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889, itself the outcome of that same departmental committee which recommended the establishment of a Welsh university. Its financial contribution, a half-penny rate, and a Treasury grant of corresponding amount, would in itself have been too meagre to produce much result, but when in the following year the Local Customs and Excise Act was passed, it contained a clause permitting Wales to use its share of the money for purposes of Intermediate as well as Technical instruction. In this way the public resources, _i.e._ the rate, the Treasury grant, and the technical money, could be administered in one fund, and for the general purpose of education, with no express exclusion of literature or culture. The tiresome restrictions, the overlapping of authorities, from which we are still suffering in England, were never to be introduced into Wales; its very poverty proved its salvation; there was a _tabula rasa_ on which no characters had been as yet inscribed. Both on account of its own needs, and as an untried field for operation, Wales was chosen as suitable ground for an experiment in secondary education, at the very moment when the institution of a fresh educational authority in England came to complicate existing conditions yet further. It is an accusation often brought against English education, that we have no system which looks well on paper. This cannot be said of Wales. The system there is perfectly simple. It applies to the whole country, and to girls and boys alike. The money is raised from three sources:— 1. A half-penny rate—the County contribution. 2. A Treasury grant, equal to the amount produced by the rate—the Treasury contribution. 3. The local share of the money from the Customs and Excise Act—the Exchequer contribution.