Siz J. Por Hennessy, when distributing prizes to the pupils of the Central School in Hongkong; delivered an address on the results attained by the and pronounced these to be factory. The Daily Press charges him with having spoken with acrimony of the school, but after reading His Excellency's speech with some care, we have failed to see that the charge is afair one. The Governor stated that it had come to his knowledge that ench year about forty of the best boys have been taken away, not to the merchants' offices in'Hongkong or the Government: service, but to the Foochow Arsenal and the Chinese Customs. He is of opinion that the grant of fourteen thousand dollars a year, which the taxpayers of the colony give to the Central School, was not intended to provide a supply of young Chinese for these services, but for the British Government, and for the Government and merchants of Hongkong. The boys who go to the Foochow Arsenal are taught in the Central School mensuration and "many other things" needed in the service into which they enter, and in which only Chinese is spoken. These special acquirements are not riesded, Sir John says, in merchants' offices in Hong: kong, but are absolutely: necessary for vice under the Government of China: There appears to us to be some force: in these views. The education provided almost altogether at the expense of the colony—for the small fee of one dollar per month which is exacted from the pupils does not go far to pay the expenses of the school,—should be of @ nature to fit the boys to take part in the ordinary business of life as merchants or clerks, and not what equips them for the service of a foreign power. Woe should not think it judicious to withdraw mensuration or-the "many things," which Sir John snys are needed for (he work of the Arsenal, from the course of study in the Central School. But we should recommend that these special things should be made subordinate to a good sound education in English, The gist of Sir John's complaints against the results of the teaching in this school, is, that the scbolara do not gain a sufficient knowledge of the English Innguage, In 1878 he asked Dr. Stewart, the hend-master of the School, to test the capacity of the boys in speaking English, and the report was to the effect that eighteen boys were able to speak English with some fluency, fifty-eight did so with diffidence, and three hundred and thirty-six could not be said to speak it at all, Matters do not seem to have improved daring the succeeding two years, as an impartial board of examiners stated, through the report of Dr. Chalmers of the Union Chapel, that "scarcely any of the Chinese boys produced, in translation into English, a single gram magical sentence," and that " the disses for translation are barely passable." This the Governor attributes partly to the boys having been trained in' the school in Ohinese for the Foochow Arsenal, and "not trained in English for an English colony," and partly to many of the boys coming' from: the mainland of China, "not with the intention of remaining in Hongkong, bat to return to their native places, to which they carry but a slender knowledge of English, and probably never hear English spoken again, Whatever knowledge they carry away into China is gained in Chinese, aid Sir John thinks they should have received a good sound English education, and that. to give thatis the chief if not the sole object for which the Central School is maintained: It is not probable that the parents of youths, who intended that"they should return to the interior of Kwangtung or more distant provinces, would send them to school to acquire a language which' it was unlikely they would ever use in after life. The Chinese mind is not yet advanced enough to-allow parents and guardians to see the advantages of boys acquiring a knowledge of foreign tongues as part of a liberal education.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.