xhi REPORT—1849. 
inquiry. There is not a single element of our commercial prosperity in which 
the vivifying power of science might not be felt, in which the loss arising from 
want of that certainty of action which mere unenlightened practice can never 
attain, does not reagh an amount which, if stated in figures, would astound the 
most thoughtless. For instance, the causes which in our great cities hasten 
the death and debase and embitter the life of so many, have at last been 
forced by chemists and physiologists on the notice of the public, Look at 
Dr. Smith’s report on the air and water of towns, in this volume; and when 
we think that the victims of the deadly influences which are there revealed 
are chiefly found among the people whose industry is the foundation of our 
greatness,—that every year cut off from the life of each of these is so much 
subtracted from. national wealth,—even were all moral sense or religious 
feeling dead in us, we must confess that the knowledge which is capable of 
averting them “is of use,” And the ships that bear the treasures produced 
by this industry through the world are lost to a fearful anount—nearly three 
daily. What are they worth—ship, cargo, men? and most of them perish 
from want of nautical science or from unscientific construction. How many 
men have been ruined by searching for minerals, when the merest smattering 
of geology would have dispelled their delusion! On the other hand, the 
agricultural produce of our islands might be doubled by a more perfect ap- 
plication of the principles of botany and chemistry. The manufacture of iron 
has been augmented sixfold by tie use of the puddling furnace and the hot- 
blast—both gifts of theory. How gigantic a result is this, without reference 
to the increase in the thousand arts of which this immense supply of that 
most precious of metals is the exponent! The splendid machinery in which 
we excel the world owes its present perfection to mechanicians who are con- 
spicuous in aur Sections, to impulses given by philosophers like Willis or 
Babbage. Nay, the steam-engine itself, your immortal townsman’s great 
conquest,—that earthly fate to which now seems to be committed the weaving 
of the world’s destiny, —that itself was a pure induction of science ;—and 
beyond that I need not go, But we live in better times; for no statesman 
now would be so imprudent as to ask such a question, even were there any 
so unfortunate as to think it, which I trust there are not. And this change 
we, the British Association, have in no small degree helped to produce. We 
have carried far and wide through the land the light which before beamed 
only from a few scattered points; if our meteor-like presence be short it is 
also bright; and as the meteor is remembered when the stationary lamp is 
unheeded, so I trust that of the tens of thousands who have felt our influence, 
few will forget the impression which it made on them, and fewer fail to feel 
that this impression ennobled and exalted their understanding. It is evident 
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