Inaugural Exercises and Addresses, March 7, 1883.

President Thompson received possession of the buildings and equipment of the Rose Polytechnic Institute, for the purpose of opening formally the course of instruction, on the 7th of March, 1883.

After prayer by Rev. Charles P. Croft, Mr. Collett, President of the Board of Managers, introduced Hon. R. W. Thompson and other gentlemen, from whose addresses, as published in the proceedings of the occasion, we shall make brief extracts.

HON. R. W. THOMPSON:

This institution is destined to fill a place hitherto unoccupied in this State and in the West. It should be viewed, therefore, with especial favor and pride by the citizens of this city, not only because it will become the central point from which valuable educational influences are expected to radiate, but because it had its origin in the mind of one of our most eminent citizens, and is so endowed by his magnificent liberality as to insure its complete success. We cannot do too much honor to the memory of a man, who, with unsurpassed liberality, rounded off a long life of assiduous industry by devoting his wealth to this and other benevolent enterprises calculated to benefit society, alleviate suffering, and give fresh impulse to ennobling thoughts.

A polytechnic school is one wherein the physical sciences are taught, in order that a familiarity with nature may be acquired and her wonderful laws understood. It has its controling idea in the fact that the objects of nature are susceptible of scientific analysis; and, starting at this point as its initial step, it deals with these objects until all their qualities are perceived, their capacity for combination observed, and their uses ascertained. It is not content to witness merely the effect produced by natural laws, but seeks to comprehend the methods of their operations, so that existing results may be ascertained and new ones worked out. The necessity for this method of education is perfectly apparent. We see, every day, the effects of natural laws without comprehending how they are produced. The object of this school is to furnish the means of solving these problems, which, to us, are so mysterious, and to make us not only familiar with natural objects, but enable us so to employ and combine them as to produce artificial results beneficial to mankind.

Why may we not assure to ourselves the advantages which others have enjoyed from technological teaching in polytechnic schools? France, under whose national auspices they were first established less than a century ago, with a view chiefly to the education of civil and military engineers, has been greatly benefited by them. They have enabled her engineers to occupy positions in the front rank among the most distinguished in the world. These, by thorough explorations, have succeeded in mapping out with great particularity all her material and natural resources. By this means, and by the scientific classification of her soils, and her mineral and vegetable products, she has been enabled to understand the nature and extent of her own resources, and to shape her policy and industries so as to develop them to the utmost. Her wonderful success in this is seen in the facts that wealth and the means of subsistence are more equally distributed in France than in any other European state, and that almost every foot of earth is made to contribute to the prosperity of a people to whom emigration is not necessary, as in neighboring nations, in order to better their material condition.

Our natural resources are many hundred fold in excess of those of France. One only of our States, out of thirty-eight, contains 70,000 square miles more of territory, and our whole area is more than seventeen times greater. There is not a single natural product to be found within the degrees of latitude that mark our extent which we do not possess.