EXHIBITION A.D. enter into and to enforce such a contract,-as to the person or GREAT persons by whom such contract should be signed, and the individual responsibility which, by so signing it, they would incur,—and as to the mode in which the money that would be required beyond Part II. the amount of the subscriptions received, was to be provided. 1849-1852. Selections. "These considerations led to the Commissioners' soliciting and obtaining from Her Majesty a Royal Charter of Incorporation, dated 15th August, 1850, under which they at present exist as a corporate body. Having thus obtained a legal status, they found themselves in a position to enter into the necessary contract for the erection of the Building, and were also enabled to procure from the Bank of England an advance of such sums as they required, on the personal guarantee of certain individual members of Guarantee. the Commission, and other well-wishers to the undertaking. The sums so advanced from time to time by the Bank of England, amounting in the whole to £32,500, were repaid, with interest, on the 22nd of May last (1851), out of the receipts at the doors, after the Exhibition had been open for three weeks.” EXTRACT FROM THE "LONDON GAZETTE," ΤΗ WINDSOR CASTLE, OCT. 28. conferred. HE Queen was this day pleased to confer the honour of Honours Knighthood upon Joseph Paxton, Esq., Fellow of the Linnæan Society, Horticultural Society, and the Society of Arts. The Queen was this day pleased to confer the honour of Knighthood upon Charles Fox, Esq., of New Street, Spring Gardens, in the County of Middlesex. The Queen was this day pleased to confer the honour of Knighthood upon William Cubitt, Esq., Fellow of the Royal Society. DOWNING STREET, OCT. 25. The Queen has been graciously pleased to give orders for the appointment of William Reid, Esq., Lieutenant-Colonel in the GREAT A.D. 1849-1852. Part II. Selections. Corps of Royal Engineers, Companion of the Most Hon. Order of the Bath, formerly Governor and Commander-in-Chief in and over the Bermuda Islands, and in and over the Windward Islands, sometime Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Exhibition of Industry of all Nations, to be an Ordinary Member of the Civil Division of the Second Class or Knight Commander of the said Most Hon. Order. Her Majesty has also been graciously pleased to give orders for the appointment of Sir Stafford Henry Northcote, Bart, sometime one of the Secretaries of the Commissioners of the Exhibition of Industry of all Nations, of Dr. Lyon Playfair, sometime one of the Special Commissioners of the Exhibition of Industry of all Nations for communicating with Local Committees, and one of the Members of one of the Committees of Sections of such Exhibition, and of Henry Cole, Esq., sometime one of the Members of the Executive Committee of the Exhibition of Industry of all Nations, to be Ordinary Members of the Civil Division of the Third Class or Companions of the said Most Hon. Order of the Bath. LECTURE XII. SECOND SERIES. DECEMBER I, 1852. ON THE INTERNATIONAL RESULTS OF THE BY HENRY COLE, ESQ., C.B. N looking at any result, great or small, we are generally dis- GREAT I posed to attribute it to some solitary cause, instead of viewing EXHIHIT it as the consequence of many, in fact innumerable, antecedents A.D. 1849-1852. Selections. each one forming a link in the chain. We look upon Guttenberg's Part II. invention of moveable types as the cause of printing, overlooking the fact that the number of scribes in the sixteenth century was' inadequate to supply the demand for written books. Manuscripts could not be produced in sufficient numbers to meet the wants of readers-readers created by increased knowledge; so mechanical repetition, or printing, came in aid of writing; and the earliest books were partly printed and partly written, and were sold as manuscripts. Guttenberg's and Schöffer's little bits of metal were merely the mechanical answer to a want, without which they would not have made them. In like manner, historians have attributed the Reformation in this country to Harry the Eighth's desire to exchange his wife-no doubt a link in the chain of causes, but a far less important one than the corruption of the clergy and the alienation of the sympathies and adhesion of the laity. The King might have quarrelled with the Pope, but he would not have seized the monasteries unless the people had been alienated from them. You will smile, perhaps, if I were to attempt to connect the Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations with the invasions of Roman Cæsar, of Danish Hengist and Horsa, and Norman William. But a moment's reflection will show that there are some relations which may be really traced, between the holding of the first cosmopolitan Exhibition of Industry by the most cosmopolitan nation in the whole world, and the character GREAT EXHIBITION A.D. 1849-1852. Part II. Selections. Free Trade. M. Buffet's of that nation. What more natural than that the first Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations should take place among a people which beyond every other in the world is composed of all nations? If we were to examine the various races which have been concerned in the production of this very audience, we should find the blood of Saxons, Celts, Germans, Dutchmen, Frenchmen, Hindoos, and probably even Negroes, flowing among it. To repeat a passage from one of the many philosophical essays that adorn the columns of the newspaper press at the present time,—a passage from The Times-I have seen it remarked that-"The average Englishman is a born cosmopolite, and to that mixed composition he owes the universality of his moral affinities and mental powers. No country in Europe has harboured so many migrations, whether as conquerors, as allies, as refugees, or simply as guests, and no people are so free as we are from the follies of nationality." To come to causes nearer at hand which produced the International Exhibition, and placed in this country that first of the long series of Exhibitions, which I have no doubt will follow, I think must be named Free Trade, or, to substitute Latin for Saxon words, "unrestricted competition." It would have been a folly to have proposed an International Exhibition before that great statesman, Sir Robert Peel, had loosened the fetters of our commercial tariff, so that it might be the interest of foreigners to accept the invitation to show us the fruits of their Industry. Had an International Exhibition of Industry been proposed in the good old times, when our manufacturers of silk, and cotton, and metals, were protected from the competition of their foreign neighbours, we should have rejected the idea just as the French manufacturers did, whose development is still cramped by protective tariffs. But it was decidedly the interest of England to adopt the idea, and she did so on that account, and because she was ripe for it, which France was not, and is not, although she may be certainly advancing to that point of reason. You are all well aware that the honour of the first idea of an proposition. International Exhibition does not belong to England. Like many other theories, it came from France, having been proposed by M. Buffet, the Minister of Commerce after the Revolution of 1848, and was submitted by him to the several Chambers of ComHe said to them :-"It has occurred to me, that it would merce. EXHIBITION A.D. 1849-1852. Selections. be interesting to the country in general, to be made acquainted GREAT with the degree of advancement towards perfection attained by our OF 1851. neighbours, in those manufactures in which we so often come in competition in foreign markets. Should we bring together and Part II. compare the specimens of skill in agriculture and manufactures now claiming our notice, whether native or foreign, there would, doubtless, be much useful experience to be gained; and, above all, a spirit of emulation, which might be greatly advantageous to the country." He then requested that the Chambers would "give their opinion on the abstract principle of exhibiting the productions of other countries, and, if they should consider that the experiment ought to be made, to enumerate to him officially the articles they thought would most conduce to the French interest when displayed." No doubt it would have been interesting to our neighbours to see the best we were doing; but the French manufacturers were not prepared to let the French ladies see the printed calicoes we were able to produce at fourpence and fivepence a-yard, or to allow the French gentlemen to examine the cutlery of Sheffield, the plated wares of Birmingham, or the pottery of Staffordshire in Paris. So the French Chambers of Commerce gave no encouragement to the abstract proposition of M. Buffet. They would not throw off their armour of protection, and will not do so until the French people themselves become more imperative in their desire to have a sight and taste of foreign manufactures. It appears to me that the proposition of M. Buffet was a very naïve one as respects ourselves. It was an invitation to our Whitworths, Maudslays, and others, to show their machinery, simply for the honour, but not the profit, of the thing, saying, as it were, "Show us what you are doing, and we shall be happy to benefit by the experience gained; but we really cannot agree to buy of you on equal terms, or that you shall have any advantage from your acceptance of our invitation." It was saying to Messrs. Dixon of Sheffield, and Messrs. Minton of the Potteries, "Pray show us your teapots of Britannia metal, which our tourists mistake for silver, and your cheap and tempting earthenware, nearly as hard and white as our Sèvres porcelain; but if you attempt to sell them here, we must confiscate them, and commit you to the Bastille." It was a French version of our English nursery ditty of Mrs. Bond's invitation to the ducks to come and be killed. But the experiment |