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turing industry, and the present state of commercial enterprise between Great Britain and other countries, would carry me into so wide a field of observation and remark, that I dare not trespass upon your patience to the extent these subjects would necessarily demand. I shall limit myself, therefore, to a hasty comment upon them. Commercial International Law has been taken up with very great interest by Professor Leone Levi; and, considering the gravity and importance of the subject, and the unquestionable public and universal advantage of common laws to regulate commercial intercourse between different countries, the Society would necessarily give its aid in furtherance of the attainment of so great a good. But the local characteristics of peoples; their laws, interwoven with their social institutions; and the prejudices arising from differences of race and language, present obstacles which seem to be insuperable. Man and his institutions, however, change with time; and a persevering and cautious pursuit of the object may in the end be successful.

On the subject of the establishment of Tribunals of Commerce, for arbitrations upon commercial questions, instead of having recourse to courts of law as at present, as such tribunals are found to be beneficial in foreign states, it would seem that they might be equally advantageous amongst ourselves; but, from some unexplained cause, although many great commercial names are associated with the undertaking, Tribunals of Commerce are still a desideratum.

Commerce is in fact the bartering the products and manufactures of one country with another; it-grows or wanes, rises or falls, with the relations between supply and demand. The cost of production affects it; the inequality of reciprocal wants affects it; the indifference of manufactures to the tastes of their customers affects it. War did greatly affect it; but now, since the Peace of Paris, that neutral ships make neutral goods, war will be less injurious to commerce than heretofore. Arbitrary protective or heavy duties affect it; but it is to be hoped that the example of England, and the growing free trade spirit, which was so strongly manifested by the delegates of many nations recently at the Congress at Brussels, may ere long influence governments and cause commerce to be left to pursue her path unrestricted. Nevertheless, even when left to herself, between free countries, aberrations occur which gainsay the anticipations and predictions of political economists and the Nestors of commerce. When gold was found in such profusion in California, and subsequently in Australia, it was predicted that the former relations between gold and silver would be immediately and seriously affected, and that the prices of labour and commodities would greatly rise, from the abundance of gold. And what is the real state of

these predictions? Neither the prices of labour nor of commodities have increased pro rata; but the price of gold itself has increased in foreign countries in consequence of the demand for it beyond the supply, originating in the perennial drain of silver from Europe, to liquidate the balance of trade in favour of China and India. In the month of January last, I read to the Statistical Society of London, a paper upon the "External Commerce of India with all the World." I showed from official statements, that there was an annually increasing net import of silver bullion into India, in consequence of the manufacturers of Europe not increasing the export of their manufactures to India in the same ratio as their increasing import of the products of India, and consequently the unusually increasing balance due to India was to be paid by increasing exports of silver bullion, the only receivable commodity in exchange; and I used these warning words: "It is of grave importance, therefore, to merchants trading with India, that they should have clear and comprehensive views of those normal conditions which indicate that their export trade in goods seems to have attained its maximum, while their import of Indian commodities has been annually increasing; and not less important is it, that the bullionists and bankers of England and of other countries should be constantly and fully alive to the exhaustive process of an Indian trade." I will not here repeat the tabulated facts communicated to the Statistical Society, but will limit myself to the statement that the unfavourable conditions of the commercial relations between India and England and China which I described in January last have been aggravated since that period. The average net amount of silver bullion imported into India from 1834-5 to 1841-2 was £1,858,000. The average had increased, from 1849-50 to 1853-54, to £3,799,900 sterling; but by the latest accounts it was more than six millions in 1854-55; and the export of silver from 4th January to 20th December, 1855, to China and India from England alone, was £6,409,889; and in the present year it is understood it will be eight millions sterling. It has always appeared to me that this drain of silver from England for the payment of the produce of India might be mitigated by the manufacturers of England and other countries adapting their manufactures exactly to the tastes of the people of India. Very little of the personal clothing of 150 millions of people in India is exported to India, and none of it in the form of fabrics in which the articles of clothing are worn-an omission which the manufacturers of England might surely supply; and as there will shortly be opened to the public a Trade Museum at the India House, of the raw and other products of India, it is to be hoped manufacturers may in time efficiently assist to diminish

this existing difference in the exchange between the trade products of India and England, and that there may be a consequent diminishing drain of silver bullion in the adjustment of the balance of trade. I may add that from 1833-34 to 1854-55 inclusive, the three mints of India have coined into rupees £71,202,828 of silver bullion.

and would, if instruction were continued, be expanded into useful knowledge. At that critical moment the parents turn their children's labour to profitable account; they take them from school, usually at the age of ten, or even earlier, engage them in domestic offices, sell their services in the mill, or in agriculture, and for future mental culture the child and the man are left to the rough, and rarely moral or religious experiences of vulgar life. The little that was learned, the writing, reading, arithmetic, and catechism, the means to ends, are either forgotten or are in abeyance, and the future enjoyments are those of the senses-the animal prevails, the "Mens divina” is obscured.

For above a century we have been designated the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce; and, in a cursory glance at our designation, the consideration of the education of the people may not appear directly within the compass of our objects. Nevertheless, a moment's thought will bring to our minds the conviction, that the arts It was the contemplation of this physical and will be more practically useful, manufactures more mental condition of the operative classes that led economically organized, and commerce will be the benevolent mind of Dr. Birkbeck to the consiconducted with more permanently profitable deration of the means of applying a remedy to the results, if the minds of those engaged in evil; or at least to offering the facilities to the willthese pursuits are suitably instructed, or, in ing of the operative classes for escape from the other words, educated. But what is education? mental darkness in which they were enveloped Does a little knowledge (for it is rarely a perfect into the bright light of a cultivated intellect. knowledge) of writing, reading, arithmetic, and Hence originated the Mechanics' Institutions of a religious catechism, constitute education ?-ac- Great Britain, chiefly from the co-operative labours quirements which are mastered before a child of the operatives themselves. Their halls sprung is ten years of age. Where is the profit of up-their libraries became respectable; gratuitous writing, when there are few or no ideas to lecturers gave their aid; and there was a reasonrecord; what the advantage of reading, with-able prospect of the child's interrupted education out thought;-what the capacity to master the being completed in the man by self-study. Obmultiplication table, without applying it; and jections there were to these Institutions. It was what a fluent utterance of terms of faith, withcut asserted, that it either made those who were probably the possession of a definite religious ambitious smatterers in science and literature, sentiment, and without a guarantee of conduct self-sufficient, conceited, and discontented with from the absence of moral convictions. And yet their condition, or that they wasted their time, this defective state of instruction of the masses and excited morbid sympathies, by reading novels has long, and does still, characterise benevolent and works of fiction. There may be some truth England, and is denominated education. Un-in all these objections, but the history of the Inhappily, our present jail returns disable us stitutions seems to indicate that the good they from questioning the reality of the picture produced more than balanced the evil. Some who thus darkly drawn. And what, in a country applied themselves gravely to physics and matheso wealthy, with so much of mental energy, matics, have emerged from the operative condition so much of practical common sense, and so into that of instructors and masters and men of much of active benevolence as England is ge- wealth; and, in the ears of thousands, the facts, nerally admitted to possess; what, I say, can whether of rature or not, enunciated by the lecbe the solution of an apparent enigma in the turer, must have, at times, occasioned either a will and the effort to educate the masses being profitable or a pleasurable reminiscence. hitherto abortive, or nearly so. Alas! a primary working men, in these Institutions, it is said, read law of our nature, a ceaseless stimulant of action, novels and why not? Most of the toil-worn and with the poor almost always resistless operatives, at the close of their ten or twelve selfishness-steps in to nullify and render fruit- hours' labour, seek stimulus and recreation. The less equally the labours of love of the benevolent, choice is between the gin-palace and pot-house the philosophic, and the religious, and the provi- and the library and lecture-room of the Mechasions of the legislature. The humble parents whonics' Institution. Better a draught of morbid are operatives, struggling with the difficulties of sensibility than inebriating alcoholic drams or maintaining themselves and large families in the muddling pots of porter. Certainly the draught disproportion between wages and the cost of sup- is less costly. But has not the operative the port, are impelled to withdraw their children from school at the very age and at that state of instruction when the mental faculties are being developed, when the little the children have learnt, could

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passions, perceptions, and susceptibilities of our common nature? Cannot his heart be moved, his joy excited, and his admiration stimulated by the incidents of ordinarily good novels?—at least,

he sees pictures of the usages of society, marks the language of intercourse and the amenities of cultivated life-all which he cannot see in his own condition. Depend upon it, the roughness, the oaths, the coarse and rude phraseology, the animal enjoyment, the harsh treatment of his wife, which may have been his characteristics before,will be gradually softened, and may, in time, disappear. I do not, therefore, disapprove of the operative reading works of fiction, and I do not regret to see the proportion these works bear to other works withdrawn from the lending libraries of the kingdom.

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It does not, however, necessarily follow, that the operative and agricultural peasant prefers works of fiction, that is to say, of amusement, rather than instruction with amusement. If I am to judge from the catalogue of a library of the Hants and Wilts Adult Education Society, an admirable association of 100 villages or more, which might be so profitably established in other parts of Great Britain, which has recently been kindly put into my hands, and in which the books chiefly used are marked in italics, I find that the "Arabian Nights," " Barnaby Rudge," by Dickens, "Last of the Barons," by Bulwer Lytton, Bracebridge Hall," Edgeworth's Novels and Tales, "Confessions of a Lover," "Ivanhoe," "Jane Eyre," and many other novels, are less in request than Historical and Biographical works; particularly the lives of "Bonaparte," and "Duke of Marlborough," and "Sir Isaac Newton." "Chambers's Journal," and "Papers for the People," ," "Dickens's Household Words." "Halfhours with the best Authors," "The Penny and Saturday Magazines," "Layard's Nineveh," and "Tales and Stories from History," appear to be popular; while the graver subjects in request are: Tracts," "The Pilgrim's Progress," "Useful Arts and Manufactories of Great Britain," ," "Social Evils and their Remedies," "Family Economist," "Cyclopedia of English Literature," "Conversation with a Father and his Children," "Defoe on the Plague," The Letter Writer," and "The Races of Man." The popular works appear to be those of Scott, "Ten Thousand a Year," "Robinson Crusoe," "My Novel," by Bulwer, 'Cottager of Glenbirnie," "The Old Oak Tree," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and "Macaulay's Essays." There are no indications of much misspent time here; indeed the fact of communities of soldiers and sailors and agricultural labourers having amongst their popular readings, "Social Evils and their Remedies," "The Family Economist," "The Pilgrim's Progress," and "The Races of Man," may probably diminish the fears of the timid, with respect to the misapplication of book knowledge by the poor, and encourage the hopeful to look for the adult pupil becoming a better man and a better citizen.

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classes of the population which has not the advantages, such as they may be, of the operatives in towns; removed, like the former class, from school in childhood, from their dispersion over a considerable area, they have scarcely the means of association or combination for the erection of common halls, common libraries, and the insuring instruction from lecturers-I mean the agricultural labourers: Unlike the mechanic-from him the further means of mental instruction in manhood are nearly cut off. It may, indeed, be said by the poet, that

"The field's his study; nature is his book;" but I fear in the main his mental faculties are rarely sufficiently developed to enable him to reap much profit from the study of the fields or of nature. Beyond his wife and children, and the few of his own mental standard, the animals he tends are his associates, and he lives and dies almost debarred from intellectual development. The agricultural labourer, therefore, is peculiarly an object for the thought and consideration of the promoters of instruction amongst the poor. For him I see little help, except through village lending libraries, if established by the country gentleman, like those of the Hants and Wilts Adult Educational Society; but chiefly his help must come from the itinerant book hawkers, designated by the French "colporteurs," I presume from carrying their packs upon their necks or shoulders. The books so hawked must necessarily be very cheap. to be within the reach of the agricultural labourer; and of what vital importance it is that the information they are capable of imparting should not only be useful, but harmless; while it is to be feared the present supplies by the hawkers stand in opposition to the latter category. Is it not an object, therefore, worthy of the Society of Arts, and in keeping with its other labours, to organize a system of supply to hawkers, of selected and cheaper books for the agricultural classes, for self-study and improvement, with the possible result of the Society finding itself applied to for examiners to grant certificates of intellectual competency to members of a class who have hitherto rarely aspired to any other distinction than that of being good farm-servants?

Very

There cannot now, I think, be a doubt entertained of the advantage of the Mechanics' Institutions of Great Britain; but these advantages were susceptible of a further and practical development, and that, it appears to me, has been applied by the Society of Arts. many of the mechanics who read in the libraries or attended in the lecture-rooms, did so with a genuine desire for self-improvement, with a latent hope, possibly, of bettering their condition, but destitute of the chance of their useful acquirements becoming known to any parties, who might desire to use them. Many operatives, But there is a large portion of the lower! also, no doubt, would gladly tread in the same

make them auxiliary sources of supply of that practical intellect upon which the Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce of all nations must depend for success.

track, with a very slight stimulus applied to them, themselves justified in asking for. The time either to commend their labour or to move their will come, it is to be hoped, when the funds pride. That stimulus, with great propriety, and, I of the Society may permit of the employtrast, ultimate public advantage, the Society of ment of gentlemen who will accept remuneration Arts has applied, for the first time, in the last year, for their labour, and, at that period, the operain the form of an invitation to members of Mecha- tives can have local facilities for those examinanics' Institutions to undergo examinations, by Ex-tions which the Council trust will give strength aminers appointed by the Society, for the purpose and permanency to Mechanics' Institutions, and of obtaining a certificate of their acquirements in branches of knowledge in which the mechanic himself might desire to be examined. With this certificate in his hand the operative could confidently offer himself for employment, and upon such certificate the employer could confidently The SECRETARY then read the list of contritake advantage of his services. I entertain san- butors to the fund for prizes to successful candiguine expectations, that the prospect of obtaining dates at the Society's Examinations to be held such a certificate, which, in fact, will be a pass- in London and Huddersfield in June, 1857, as port to service, will have an early and beneficial follows:effect upon a considerable portion of the operatives who belong to Mechanics' Institutions; that there will be a new-born zeal for acquirement; that emulation may arise, and that the languor which threatened to pass into indifference may change into an active pursuit of those various branches of knowledge which the libraries and lectures are so capable of supplying.

As an additional incentive to the candidate for examination beyond the honourable certificate of competency which he might obtain, the Council have thought it desirable to institute money prizes; and many liberal members of the Society have come forward with contributions to form a prize fund, a list of whom will be read to the meeting, and further subscriptions are invited. To work out the examinations to their legitimate objects, the Council, through deputations, waited upon the heads of some of the Public Departments of the State, in the hope of one or more of the minor situations in a department being reserved as prizes for those candidates who had obtained the highest-class certificates. The late Mr. Wood, Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, was considerate enough to place at the disposal of the Council, as prizes, a couple of situations in his department. His unexpected decease has, however, deprived the Council of these rewards for competent candidates; but the Council will still indulge in the hope, that the heads of departments will not be wanting in the desire to aid in their laudable efforts to stimulate self-instruction in manhood.

The Society of Arts, at present, is necessitated to confine itself to two centres of examination, one in London, and one at Huddersfield. The Society is indebted to the gratuitous aid of many able and distinguished men for their services as examiners, and the establishment of more centres of examination at present would impose upon those benevolent gentlemen an amount of labour, and subject them to an extent of inconvenience which the Council of the Society could in no wise deem

The Society of Arts
Anonymous....

Francis Bennoch, Esq.
Rev. Dr. Booth, F.R.S..

£ 8.

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10 O

10 10

10 10

William Brown, Esq., M.P.....

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Thomas De la Rue, Esq.

10 10

Warren De la Rue, Esq., F.R.S...

10 10

C. Wentworth Dilke, Esq.
Peter Graham, Esq.

10 10

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to machinery bettering the condition of the workman, as well as general humanity, yet by no means takes in the whole scope of the question. It is rather a special pleading in favour of special Lancashire cotton-spinning, dating-so says Mr. Chadwick, from Mr. John Kennedy, and not from Arkwright—than a question how the cotton wants of the British Empire may be best supplied with the greatest happiness to the greatest number.

they tend to disappear continually; their lives are shorter, and, as a matter of commercial economy, it is not desirable to "raise," as the Americans call it, a short-lived people. The capital invested to grow them up to twentyone years of age is sunk for a shorter period of fructification, and consequently at a higher rate of interest. If we could only obtain our clothing by the process of keeping up an artificial weakly class, we might then come to It is quite true that our first cotton came from India, study the question, whether natural materials are not ready webbed for making into garments, and that the best adapted to the country where they are produced, as labour of India being beaten by steam labour in England, furs at the North Pole, wool in the temperate climates, the cotton was brought raw, spun and woven in Lanca- and cotton towards the Equator. But the manufacture shire, and carried back in webs of long cloth and other, of cotton clothing is not necessarily confined to Lancato undersell the native manufacturers in the Indian shire, any more than woollen clothing is confined to market. And Lancashire spinners and weavers, native Yorkshire; and it seems reasonable that the manufacture and imported from Scotland and Ireland, did earn greatly should go where soil and climate are favourable; where increased wages during the period of European wars, the people are indigenous, and not exotics, and the maand the English government took great pains to prevent the terial is produced and can be produced in any quantities. exportation of machinery, in order to keep other countries To bring cotton, raw, from America, work it up in tributary and subsidiary to Great Britain. But their Lancashire by exotic workmen, and sell it in India, is pains were unsuccessful, and cotton mills grew up in certainly a less economical process than to grow it in France and Spain, Germany, Italy, America, and else- India, work it in India by natives, and consume it in where. In many of these countries people were willing India by the general population there and elsewhere. to work for such small wages that the English manufac- Economically, Lancashire labours under a disadvantage turer was cut out, and where the small rate of wages did as compared with India. Lancashire cannot grow cotton not balance other disadvantages in machinery, or where,-India can, and, it is said, as fine as the American. with equal machinery, as in the United States, wages Lancashire cannot grow men and women, for if she were high, the governments of those countries cked the ceased to import them they would disappear in a few matter out with prohibitory duties. generations, i.e., men and women fit for cotton working. India has grown this class of population for ages-they are indigenous, and will go on as long as the climate continues the same. Indigenous Indian workers are cheaper than exotic Lancashire workers, for they require less and cheaper food. The warmth produced by burning carbon in the lungs of the Lancashire exotic, exists abundantly in the Indian atmosphere. What advantage, therefore, is there in keeping up an exotic race of British subjects to spin and weave cotton in Lancashire, while indigenous British subjects to any amount exist in India, better fitted for the work, and who, by reason of the climate, can live on one-fourth the wages.

Not wishing to battle this in the first instance by improved machinery, the English manufacturers sought to cut down wages, which would bear reduction. This not sufficing, the power-loom was brought in, and the Luddite riots and frame-breaking were a clear proof that the workpeople did undergo suffering for a time. They had been taught a trade which they could not change for another, and in their rude way they maintained a struggle for employment, by which must be understood wages and food. No special pleading can get rid of this broad fact, even though we know that the "greatest happiness" principle demanded the sacrifice of the minority to the majority. It was an evil to the sufferers, though a necessary evil.

Mr. Chadwick asserts that "Lancashire has less to fear than ever from the low priced and unrestricted labour and In short, a great exotic business had been created in long hours of the cotton manufacturers of other countries;" Lancashire, in which nominally free people became slaves and that in Austria thirteen-and-a-half-hours does not of the mill, as much as black men were slaves of the get more produce turned off than ten-and-a-half hours in sugar-cane. A giant capital had been put into machines Manchester. Very possible. But I doubt the fact, with and mills, and vested interests created, which constantly equal machinery in both cases. Long habit has made sought to import, and cheapen, and educate labour. And, machine improvement in Lancashire a day-by-day prothough humane manufacturers existed, there were cess; and there is little doubt that it is to this fact of the abundance also of hard taskmasters rising from the ranks, indigenous skill of Lancashire in metal-working and familiar with every screwing process, and not more machine inventing, that the advantages are owing rather humane than West India planters, whose commercial than to the workers of the machines. Year by year, as axiom was, 66 better to buy than breed." The Lancashire profits get wire-drawn, so goes on invention to balance it, masters needed not to breed. That was done for them Lancashire excels India because she has machines and in Ireland and elsewhere, as well as by their own work-inventors as well as educated workmen. But if India people. But, wherever bred, there can be no doubt of had the machines and inventors, with the workers of the one fact, that spinners and weavers were either born or machines at one-fourth the wages of Lancashire, the bred a distinct class from the general mass of British freight from India would not be an impediment to prepeople, who gained their living by athletic and open-air vent British subjects in India from beating British sublabour. They are lower in stature, paler in complexion,jects in Lancashire out of the home market with cotton more delicate in nervous organisation. And, notwith-webs. standing, they require more and more stimulating food And this must eventually come to pass. The opening than open air workers-probably for want of assimilating stimulus in the atmosphere in which they work. The atmosphere of the cotton-mill is far from being as pure as the open air, and it is essential to cotton manufacture, at least in the present state of our manufacturing knowledge, to work in a heated atmosphere. In short, to work a cotton-mill in Lancashire, which is a cold and moist climate, we must create a race and an artificial climate analogous to those of Eastern India. It is quite true that amongst the people of Great Britain and its immigrants, we have many people of this class, especially in Ireland-the thin-fingered class, adapted to artistical employments, but they do not belong to the soil or climate;

up the country by railways will stimulate the growth of cotton. The growth of cotton will in time lead to the import of machinery from Lancashire into the Nerbudda districts, where coal and iron abound, and where cotton also will abound. The machinery of cotton mills is precisely the kind of machinery which Indian handicraftsmen-sword-cutlers and others will know how to repair; and by quicker or slower process cotton-spinners and weavers will decrease in Lancashire, and machine-makers will increase with indigenous energy, while in India cotton-spinners and weavers will grow and multiply. Production will thus be greatly increased and art lessened. And the Indian staple of manhood and womanhood

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