102 Sir Fredericl Abel [April 22, 



more elaborate collections of the head establishment, shall be 

 distributed to provincial centres, and that the provinces shall be kept 

 thoroiighlv conversant with the current information from the Colonies 

 and India, bearing upon the interests of the commercial man, the 

 manufacturer, and the intending emigrant. 



Although the formation, and maintenance up to date, of collec- 

 tions illustrative of the development and present condition of the 

 important Industries of the Empire also forms, as I have stated, a 

 part of the programme of the Institute, the scope of its activity in 

 relation to industry will be of a much more comprehensive character ; 

 indeed, it is to be hoped that the work which it will achieve in 

 furtherance of the development and progress of industries and their 

 future maintainance in the United Kingdom at least upon a footing 

 of equality with their conditions in the great Continental States, will 

 be most prominent in securing to the Imperial Institute the exalted 

 position which it should occupy as the National Jubilee Memorial 

 of Her Majesty's reign. 



There is no need for me to recall to the minds of an audience in 

 the Eoyal Institution the great strides which have been made during 

 the last fifty years in the applications of science to the purposes of 

 daily life, to the advancement of commerce, and to the development 

 of the arts and manufactures. Nor is it necessary to dwell uj^on the 

 fact that this country is the birth-place of the majority of the great 

 scientific and practical achievements which have revolutionised means 

 of intercommunication, and have in other ways transformed the con- 

 ditions under which manufactures, the arts and commerce are pursued. 

 These very achievements, of which we as a Nation are so justly proud, 

 have led, however, by many of their results, to our becoming reduced 

 to an equality of position with other prominent Nations in regard to 

 important advantages we so long derived from the possession in this 

 country of great material resom-ces easy of access and application, 

 and from the consequent pre-eminence in certain branches of trade 

 and industry which we so long enjoyed. 



In 1852, Sir Lyon Play fair, in one of a course of most interesting 

 lectures on some of the results of the preceding year's great Exhibi- 

 tion, was impelled by the teaching of that great world's display, to 

 point out that " the raw material, formerly our capital advantage, 

 was gradually being equalised in price and made available to all by 

 the improvements in locomotion," and " that industry must in future 

 be supported not by a competition of local advantages, but by a com- 

 petition of intellect." If this was already felt to be the state of the 

 case six-and-thirty years ago, how much more must we be convinced 

 of the full truth of this at the present day, by the conditions under 

 which the British merchant and manufacturer have to compete with 

 their rivals on the Continent and in the United States. 



It is still within the recollection of many that almost the whole 

 world was in very great measure dependent upon Great Britain for 

 its supplies of ordinary cast iron. Even as lately as 1871, the 



