The original object of the Institution was certainly to disseminate knowledge in the most effectual way possible; and for this purpose, while the higher ranks of society were amused and instructed by lecturers on science and its too much neglected applications to the purposes of common life, it was conceived necessary to do somewhat in order to enlighten the minds of that class which had not enjoyed the advantages of a liberal education, and yet whose improvement was necessarily connected with the progress of the useful arts. This was always considered as an object of so much importance by Count Rumford, who has certainly had the greatest share in establishing the Institution, that he repeatedly declared to me when I first knew him that it was his intention to do everything in his power to establish a school for science under the auspices of the Institution and particularly calculated for working mechanics, a class of men whose deficiency in knowledge proves one of the greatest drawbacks to the progress of art. It was through the prospect of being employed in this way, which would have been as agreeable to my habits of thinking as useful to my interest, that I was induced to give up the school which I then kept and the other business in which I was engaged, and to accept of a situation and salary in the Institution by no means equivalent to what I should have considered myself as entitled to under other circumstances. Later Mr. Webster wrote to a friend: