244 LETTER FROM M. QUETELET. 1850 it was to the Prince they must turn for guidance at every point. On the 8th of March we find Lord Granville writing to the Prince's secretary: In any case, I am afraid that there must be a great tax on the attention and time of his Royal Highness, who appears to be almost the only person who has considered the subject both as a whole and in its details. The whole thing would fall to pieces, if he left it to itself.' That it did not do so, it is, however, but justice to say, was due in no small degree to the unwearied assistance given to the Prince by Lord Granville himself, and by Mr. (now Sir) Stafford Northcote. 6 Meanwhile, amid all the difficulties and impediments which were inseparable from an enterprise so novel and of such vast proportions, the Prince was encouraged to persevere by the warm support of those on whose opinions he set the highest value. His old instructor and friend, M. Quetelet, wrote to him in January from Brussels: Assuredly I shall not fail to go to England, and to be present, if I can, in that vast arena, which you have opened to the industry of all nations. These are the tournaments of our modern times; they are less poetical perhaps than those of ancient times, but they also have their character of grandeur. Your Royal Highness has thoroughly apprehended the social transformation which is now in progress, and in placing yourself at the head of this great movement, you give a fresh proof of your sagacity and a fresh guarantee for the order and prosperity of the country of your adoption.' On the 21st of February the first of the great public meetings on the subject was held in Willis's Rooms. Among the speakers, France was represented by M. Drouyn de Lhuys, Prussia by the Chevalier Bunsen, America by Mr. Lawrence, Belgium by M. Van de Weyer, while Lord Brougham and the Bishop of Oxford helped with others to 1850 SPEECH BY LORD MORPETH. 245 sustain the discussion at a level far beyond that of most public meetings. The speech, able throughout, of Lord Morpeth, afterwards Lord Carlisle, who presided, was much admired at the time for the happy reference to his favourite poet, with which it concluded: 'I cannot,' he said, 'better sum up all that may be said, than in words written nearly a century and a half ago by a poet who always expresses himself with more point and completeness than any other man. I refer to Alexander Pope. He says: "For me the balm shall bleed, the amber flow, The coral redden, and the ruby glow; The pearly shell its lucid globe unfold, And Phoebus warm the ripening ore to gold; 'Listen, ladies and gentlemen, and see if Pope was not almost as good a prophet as he was a poet : 6 "The time shall come, when, free as seas or wind, Morpeth,' the Duchess of Sutherland writes to the Queen the same day, 'never spoke better, and his prophetic quotation from Pope's beautiful passage on the Thames was enthusiastically cheered.' The time had now come for the Prince to place before The Prince had no warmer admirer than this accomplished and most estimable lady. In a letter to Baron Stockmar about this time (16th March) the Queen writes: I must ever love the Duchess of Sutherland for her very great and very sincere admiration of the Prince, which comes out on all occasions. There is not a work he undertakes, nor a thing he does or says, which she does not follow with the greatest interest, being herself so anxious to do good, so liberal-minded, so superior to prejudice, and so eager to learn, and improve herself and others.' 246 SPEECH BY THE PRINCE 1850 the world in his own words his conception of the scope and purpose of the proposed Exhibition. The opportunity for doing so was afforded by a banquet given upon a magnificent scale at the Mansion House on the 21st of March, to which the chief officers of State, the Foreign Ambassadors, the Royal Commissioners for the Exhibition, and the chief magistrates of more than two hundred towns, had been invited. The Prince had by this time accustomed the public to expect much from his addresses; but in broad and comprehensive grasp of view and in condensed fulness and vigour of expression, none of them was superior to the speech which he now made. The prospect which it shadowed out of the great family of man, drawn together by the bond of mutual helpfulness and enlightened emulation in the arts of civilised life, had been the dream of poets and sages. No one knew better than the Prince, profoundly versed as he was in the history of the past, and still more in the stormy politics of the present, that this must long continue to be a climax, seen only in prophetic vision, of the throes and struggles of the human race, and that the halcyon days of universal peace were certainly not to be looked for in the present epoch, nor it might be for many generations to come. But his eminently practical genius saw that the time had arrived to give such an impulse towards this desirable result, as might greatly accelerate its arrival, and that it was from England this impulse might most fitly come. 'England's mission, duty, and interest,' he had written to Lord John Russell on the 5th of September, 1847, is to put herself at the head of the diffusion of civilisation and the attainment of liberty.' She might lose some of her material advantages, by teaching other nations the arts and methods by which she had developed her internal resources, and commanded the See his letter printed ante, vol. i. p. 433. 1850 AT THE MANSION HOUSE. 247 markets of the world. She might draw upon herself a competition in these markets, which might otherwise have long been postponed. But the same energy, the same intellectual activity which had put her in the van of nations, the Prince believed, would enable her to hold her place under any alteration of circumstances. In any case, whatever might be said by detractors of her insular narrowness and selfishness, he understood her people too well to doubt that they would see with pleasure the spread throughout the world of the blessings which they had conquered for themselves, and be content to run even considerable risks in accelerating that better understanding of each other, without which the unity of mankind is impossible. The general satisfaction created by the parts of his speech now to be quoted showed that in this estimate of British feeling he had not been mistaken : 'I conceive it to be the duty of every educated person closely to watch and study the time in which he lives, and, as far as in him lies, to add his humble mite of individual exertion to further the accomplishment of what he believes Providence to have ordained. 'Nobody, however, who has paid any attention to the peculiar features of our present era, will doubt for a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end, to which, indeed, all history points-the realisation of the unity of mankind. Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the peculiar characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but rather a unity, the result and product of those very national varieties and antagonistic qualities. 'The distances which separated the different nations and parts of the globe are rapidly vanishing before the achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with incredible ease; the languages of all nations are known, and their acquirement placed within the reach of everybody; thought is communicated with the rapidity, and even by the power, of lightning. 248 SPEECH BY THE PRINCE. 1850 On the other hand, the great principle of division of labour, which may be called the moving power of civilisation, is being extended to all branches of science, industry, and art. 'Whilst formerly the greatest mental energies strove at universal knowledge, and that knowledge was confined to the few, now they are directed on specialities, and in these, again, even to the minutest points; but the knowledge acquired becomes at once the property of the community at large; for, whilst formerly discovery was wrapped in secrecy, the publicity of the present day causes that no sooner is a discovery or invention made than it is already improved upon and surpassed by competing efforts. The products of all quarters of the globe are placed at our disposal, and we have only to choose which is the best and the cheapest for our purposes, and the powers of production are intrusted to the stimulus of competition and capital. 'So man is approaching a more complete fulfilment of that great and sacred mission which he has to perform in this world. His reason being created after the image of God, he has to use it to discover the laws by which the Almighty governs His creation, and, by making these laws his standard of action, to conquer nature to his use; himself a divine instrument. 'Science discovers these laws of power, motion, and transformation; industry applies them to the raw matter, which the earth yields us in abundance, but which becomes valuable only by knowledge. Art teaches us the immutable laws of beauty and symmetry, and gives to our productions forms in accordance to them. 'Gentlemen, the Exhibition of 1851 is to give us a true test and a living picture of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived in this great task, and a new starting-point from which all nations will be able to direct their further exertions. 'I confidently hope that the first impression which the view of this vast collection will produce upon the spectator will be that of deep thankfulness to the Almighty for the blessings which He has bestowed upon us already here below; and the second, the conviction that they can only be realised in proportion to the help which we are prepared to render each other; therefore, only by peace, love, and ready assistance, not only between individuals, but between the nations of the earth.' |