368 



NATURE 



[August 15, 1889 



There had, he said, been protests from public bodies and 

 towns against the sale of the estate, and it was also the 

 case, as indicated in the question of Sir Lyon Playfair, 

 that a deputation had waited on the Commissioners and 

 urged the sale. The impression thus conveyed was, that 

 the Commissioners had quite recently been between two 

 fires, and had given way under the hottest. This would 

 be a poor enough plight for a body of public men, who, 

 up to within the last three or four years, had been con- 

 sistent and strong enough to adhere to the main lines of 

 a policy traced out for them in 1852, when they were 

 charged with a public trust, liut it is worse than a poor 

 plight when considered, as it has to be, in conjunction 

 with matured opinions and resolutions published by that 

 same body of men in 1878. 



The deputation to which Sir Lyon Playfair directed atten- 

 tion waited on the Commissioners, not, as was imagined, 

 quite recently, but as long ago as 1877. The deputation 

 was received at Marlborough House on June 20, 1877, 

 and was headed by Mr. Chamberlain. The Prince of 

 Wales made a very brief reply to it ; and Lord Granville 

 delivered a full exposition of the Commissioners' reasons 

 for disagreeing with the views of the deputation. The 

 deputation " proposed, as the best method of dealing 

 with the Commissioners' trust: (i) the realization of 

 the estate to as great an extent as possible ; and (2) the 

 application of the realized funds, in grants to provincial 

 Museums for buildings, and for the purchase of suitable 

 objects for exhibition therein.'' Amongst other states- 

 manlike views of their responsibilities towards their 

 trust and to the public at large, Lord Granville, on be- 

 half of the Commissioners, pointed to the importance, in 

 the founding of provincial Museums, of voluntary sub- 

 scriptions, and to the " danger of stopping the flow of 

 them if you [the deputation] get a great central body 

 supplying everything. There is the consideration how 

 far even a large sum would go." The possibility of real- 

 izing a portion of the estate was mentioned ; but it should 

 be clearly stated that that portion of the estate was a 

 site lying to the sotdh of the present Imperial Institute. 

 No portion of the inner gardens, upon which the Albert 

 Hall abuts, was to be put up for sale. 



It will be useful to now give extracts from the Sixth 

 Report of the Commissioners published in 1878, shortly 

 after the deputation above referred to had waited on 

 them. 



" The claim of the provincial towns to share in the appli- 

 cation of our funds was supported by two considerations. 

 In the first place, it was said that the support which 

 enabled the Exhibition of 185 1 to be held was obtained, 

 to a large extent, from our great manufacturing centres. 

 As a fact, the metropolis subscribed ^35,108 16^. i\d., and 

 the provinces ^34,057 12s. 8d. The second consideration 

 urged was the difficulty which is felt in provincial towns 

 in raising, by means of rates, amounts adequate to meet 

 the expenses of building and maintaining scientific mu- 

 seums and galleries of art. 



" That we are not insensible to the claims of the pro- 

 vinces to a share of the benefits to be derived from the 

 resources at our command will be seen from the resolu- 

 tions at which we have arrived, but as to the form in 

 •which such benefit should accrue we hold different views 

 from those expressed by the deputation. In the first place, 

 we consider that the proposal to capitalize the whole of our 

 property cannot be entertained, because, apart from all 

 other reasons, it is sufficient for our present purpose to 

 observe that it would clearly be at variance with the 

 appropriation of the land originally contemplated, and a 

 reversal of the whole past policy of our body.i 



' " The following is an extract from our Second Report, dated in 1852 : — ' A 

 large number of suggestions and applications, in reference to the d.sposal of 

 the surplus, have been made to the Commissioners. . . . 'i'he answer which 

 the Commissioners have returned to the different applications submitted to 

 them has been to show, by reference to their preliminary Report to Her 

 Majesty, of the 6ih of November of last year, that they do not feel them- 



" The object with which, under the guidance of the 

 Prince Consort, we purchased the estate was to provide 

 a remedy for the want so often felt in this country of an 

 extensive site for the development of great institutions 

 for the promotion of industrial art and science amongst 

 the manufacturing population. The South Kensington 

 Museum and the Museum of Natural History are twO' 

 great monuments of the prudence of the course adopted,, 

 and, so long as the wants of technical education are so 

 inefficiently provided for in this country as they are at 

 present, we think that we ought to keep in our hands the 

 means of meeting the possible requirements of institutions 

 for that purpose. . . . 



" The suggestion that the resources at our command 

 might be applied to the promotion of local Museums of 

 Science and Art, by grants in aid of buildings or collec- 

 tions of suitable objects, had received our full considera- 

 tion before the deputation of provincial municipal repre- 

 sentatives, already referred to, pressed this course upon 

 us. The establishment of local Museums is an object 

 which has long commended itself to us. In the original 

 scheme, drawn up in the year 1868, for the series of 

 annual International Exhibitions, it was proposed that 

 ' a sum of money might be annually devoted to make 

 purchases of remarkable objects, which might be sent to- 

 local Museums throughout the country.' If this scheme 

 had proved permanently successful, we might have been 

 able to supply, by degrees, each of the principal centres 

 of industry with collections of objects illustrating the 

 manufactures in which they are chiefly interested. But, 

 in the present condition of our trust, we see several ob- 

 jections to the promotion of local institutions as a method 

 of applying our resources. Firstly, the amount of the 

 funds at our disposal is very limited, as compared with 

 the numerous demands which might legitimately be made 

 upon us in case we announced our readiness to make 

 grants in favour of local institutions. Secondly, we fear 

 the risk that the knowledge that a central body was 

 ready with funds to assist local objects would have the 

 effect of decreasing rather than stimulating private 

 local subscriptions, and of producing a lukewarmness in 

 local efforts which would far more than counterbalance 

 the moderate amount of assistance which a share of 

 our funds would provide. Thirdly, and chiefly, it is 

 evident that such grants, while exhausting our funds, 

 would result in mere temporary help to science and 

 art." 



The above extracts relate to the deputation to which 

 Sir Lyon Playfair has drawn attention, and upon whose 

 views, very distinctly controverted by the Commissioners, 

 he seems to rely for justification in setting aside the 

 protests made within the last three months against a sale 

 such as the Commissioners have been opposed to. 



It is therefore difficult to escape from some such con- 

 clusion as this : that the projected sale of the inner 

 gardens of the estate for private building speculations 

 will be an autocratic act utterly ruinous to the character 

 of the Commissioners ; and that the Commissioners 

 persist in defending and urging this act by pleas and 

 arguments stoutly opposed by themselves twelve years 

 ago. 



selves to be in a position to comply with proposals which involve the surplus 

 being applied to purposes of a limited, partial, or local character, or to return- 

 ing to the different localities, in order to be there appropriated to local public 

 objects connected with the progress of art, science, and education, the 

 amount of subscriptions originally raised in each place, which subscriptions 

 were at the time made on the clear understanding that they mus. be "abso- 

 lute and definite." The Co:Timissiuners would call especial attention to the. 

 memorials from the important manufacturing and commercial towns oC 

 Birmingham, Bristol, Halifax, Hull, Oldham, Sheffield, and the Staffordshire 

 Potteries, which are appended to this Report, and indicate cleairly the strong 

 feeling entertained by tnose well entitled to form an opinion on this subject, 

 of the importance of establishments for instructing tliose engaged in trade 

 and manufacture in the principles of science and art on which their reJ 

 spective industr.es depend.' 'ihe towns mentioned presented memorials 

 praying for the establishment of a Central Institution of Arts and Manu-j 

 fact u res." 



