A deputation of great weight and influence had an interview
with the Prime Minister on Tuesday to ask for a grant to Owens College, for the great building extension which it is propos- ing, and produced resolutions in favour of the application from the Town Councils of Manchester, Salford, Stockport, Bolton, Oldham, Stalybridge, and Wigan. Mr. Grote, the historian of Greece, spoke very ably on behalf of the application. Mr. Disraeli was a little enigmatic in his reply. He said that the application should receive not only the candid, but "very particular attention" of Government, at the same time expressing his confidence that whether any aid were granted by Government or not, Lancashire would be equal to the emergency, and give the College all it wanted. We hope the prayer of the petitioners may be acceded to, not only for the sake of the great utility of the help itself,— which would be important,—but for the sake of the principle of securing central inspection for these great middle-class Colleges, which we hope soon to see multiplied. Owens College itself is at present under the wisest and most learned academical manage- ment that is to be found in the United Kingdom, but it may not always be so, either in this case, or in the case of other Colleges which we are soon likely to see ; and it seems to us most important that local education of the highest, no less than of the simplest type, should never again be allowed to become isolated and local, and to grow up without the check of a wise central regulation.
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