CHAPTER I. 



THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF MATERIAL PROGRESS. 



DURING the last one hundred years this nation 

 has advanced with unexampled speed. More wealth 

 has been accumulated by Englishmen since the 

 commencement of the present century, than in all 

 preceding time since the period of Julius Caesar; 

 one of the causes of this has been the discovery of 

 new truths of science, and their subservience to 

 useful purposes by means of invention. The great 

 manufacturing success of this country has been 

 largely due to those applications of science, which 

 have enabled us to utilise our abundant stores of 

 coal and iron-ore, in steam engines, machinery, and 

 a multitude of mechanical, physical, and chemical 

 processes; also to the discovery of electro-magnetism 

 and its application in the electric-telegraph, etc. 

 And had it not been for these and other adaptations 

 of scientific knowledge, we should have competed in 

 vain with the cheaper labour and longer days of toil 

 of continental nations. Other great causes, such as 

 our insular position, suitable climate, freedom, geo- 



