292 Josiah Wedgwood CHAP. 



supply the market with increasing orders for Queen's 

 ware, he also desired to add to his reputation by 

 connecting his manufacture with art, and increasing 

 the taste of the people who every day used, while con- 

 templating, his useful ware. 



In the eloquent address delivered by the Eight Hon. 

 W. E. Gladstone, on the laying of the foundation stone 

 of the Wedgwood Institute at Burslem, on the 26th 

 October 1863, many pregnant remarks were made on 

 the association of Beauty and Utility, because (as the 

 Chancellor of the Exchequer remarked), "it is in this 

 department, I conceive, that we are to look for the 

 peculiar pre-eminence, I will not scruple to say the 

 peculiar greatness, of Wedgwood. . . . The pursuit of 

 the element of Beauty, in the business of production, 

 will be found to act with a genial, chastening, and 

 refining influence on the commercial spirit ; that, up to 

 a certain point, it is in the nature of a preservative 

 against some of the moral dangers that beset trading 

 and manufacturing enterprise ; and that we are justified 

 in regarding it not merely as an economical benefit ; 

 not merely as that which contributes to our works an 

 element of value; not merely as that which supplies a par- 

 ticular faculty of human nature with its proper food, but 

 as a liberalising and civilising power, and an instrument, 

 in its own sphere, of moral and social improvement." 



And again, in the same address on the achievements 

 of Wedgwood, Mr. Gladstone said : " His most original 

 and characteristic merit lay, as I have said, in the 



