1862.] on the International Exhibition of 1862. 487 



modern trade. In the old Asiatic nations, where influence is still pal- 

 pable among mankind on the score of authority and the bond of 

 religion, the ideas of free trade and competition would have been 

 incomprehensible. The exclusion of foreigners from the internal 

 navigation of the several countries was universal, and none were per- 

 mitted even to enter foreign ports, except with the tessera hospilalis, 

 or some other symbol of a commercial treaty. Bars were thrown 

 across the mouths of some rivers, as by the Persians across the Tigris 

 after their conquest of Babylon ; traces of which impediments to navi- 

 gation still remain. And in modern Europe the growth of liberal 

 commerce has been slow indeed, and it is one of the happiest privileges 

 of our time, that as regards ourselves at least, we have come to see its 

 consummation. In Sir Dudley North's * Discourse on Trade/ published 

 in 1691, the principle is laid down "that the whole world as to trade 

 is but as one nation or people, and therein nations are as persons." 

 But the Hollander and the Portuguese long remained the objects of a 

 commercial animosity, which did not prevent the one from occupying 

 our fisheries up to the very coast, and the other from sharing with us 

 the dominion of India. 



The social and political conditions represented by our Exhibition 

 next occupied the attention of the speaker. The whole of this marvel- 

 lous combination of energy and art is the result of free labour — of the 

 spontaneous industry of mankind. It is not the mere application of local 

 nature to local designs, but the collation and transmutation of most 

 diverse and distinct elements to the use and benefit of our race : the 

 juxta-position of our coal and iron have suggested the manufactures 

 of Sheffield, but it is the borax of Tuscany which assists the ingenious 

 labourers of Colebrooke Dale. It is the sign and symbol of the 

 general education of the world, which renders it impossible that dis- 

 coveries can be neglected or arts be lost. The ignorance and supersti- 

 tion which kept mankind in unnecessary physical pain after the inven- 

 tion of the "spongia somnifera" of the 12th century, can no longer 

 check the annaesthetic powers of a beneficial nature, nor would it 

 require a Harvey to revive, however he might be required to develope, 

 the knowledge that perished with the ashes of Servetus. 



But besides the intercommunication of nations in space, the speaker 

 remarked, our Exhibition surely owes much to what he would call the 

 trade of time, the thoughts, the feelings, the interests, that pass from 

 generation to generation ; the arts of Greece, the laws of Rome, the 

 religion of the Semitic peoples, the triple elements of modern civilization. 

 The silent East gave the alphabetic character which has transmitted 

 all the speeches and varied literature of the West ; the Brahmin pre- 

 serves the sacred language in which the linguistic science of modem 

 times traces the mother-tongue of all the Indo-Germanic dialects that 

 pass from mouth to mouth beneath these lofty domes. 



The singularity of the circumstance that England should be the 

 scene of this meeting of the nations was next alluded to. It was an 

 illustration of the advantage of our insular position, which being com- 



