time a vital consideration; and it is equally obvious that
experience, essential to the success of all combination, is
especially so when its object is to diffuse the results of
experience and of reflection.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, the student of the present profitable
history of this society does not stop here in his learning; when he
has got so far, he finds with interest and pleasure that the parent
society at certain stated periods invites the more eager and
enterprising members of the local society to submit themselves to
voluntary examination in various branches of useful knowledge, of
which examination it takes the charge and arranges the details, and
invites the successful candidates to come to Manchester to receive
the prizes and certificates of merit which it impartially awards.
The most successful of the competitors in the list of these
examinations are now among us, and these little marks of
recognition and encouragement I shall have the honour presently of
giving them, as they come before you, one by one, for that purpose.
I have looked over a few of those examination papers, which have
comprised history, geography, grammar, arithmetic, book-keeping,
decimal coinage, mensuration, mathematics, social economy, the
French language – in fact, they comprise all the keys that open all
the locks of knowledge. I felt most devoutly gratified, as to many
of them, that they had not been submitted to me to answer, for I am
perfectly sure that if they had been, I should have had mighty
little to bestow upon myself to-night. And yet it is always to be
observed and seriously remembered that these examinations are
undergone by people whose lives have been passed in a continual
fight for bread, and whose whole existence, has been a constant
wrestle with
“Those twin gaolers of the daring heart –
Low birth and iron fortune.”
I could not but consider, with extraordinary admiration, that these
questions have been replied to, not by men like myself, the
business of whose life is with writing and with books, but by men,
the business of whose life is with tools and with machinery.
Let me endeavour to recall, as well as my memory will serve me,
from among the most interesting cases of prize-holders and
certificate-gainers who will appear before you, some two or three
of the most conspicuous examples. There are two poor brothers from
near Chorley, who work from morning to night in a coal-pit, and
who, in all weathers, have walked eight miles a-night, three nights
a-week, to attend the classes in which they have gained
distinction. There are two poor boys from Bollington, who begin
life as piecers at one shilling or eighteen-pence a-week, and the
father of one of whom was cut to pieces by the machinery at which
he worked, but not before he had himself founded the institution in
which this son has since come to be taught. These two poor boys
will appear before you to-night, to take the second-class prize in
chemistry. There is a plasterer from Bury, sixteen years of age,
who took a third-class certificate last year at the hands of Lord
Brougham; he is this year again successful in a competition three
Page 54
Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
times as severe. There is a wagon-maker from the same place, who
knew little or absolutely nothing until he was a grown man, and who
has learned all he knows, which is a great deal, in the local
institution. There is a chain-maker, in very humble circumstances,
and working hard all day, who walks six miles a-night, three nights
a-week, to attend the classes in which he has won so famous a
place. There is a moulder in an iron foundry, who, whilst he was
working twelve hours a day before the furnace, got up at four
o’clock in the morning to learn drawing. “The thought of my lads,”
he writes in his modest account of himself, “in their peaceful
slumbers above me, gave me fresh courage, and I used to think that
if I should never receive any personal benefit, I might instruct
them when they came to be of an age to understand the mighty