ADDRliSS. XCIX 



other aid may be applied, and the experimeut, whether successful or not, 

 will be interesting. 



Docks and harbours I have no time to mention; for it is time this long and, 

 I fear, tedious address should close. 



" Wheuco and whither," is an aphorism which leads us away from present 

 and plainer objects to those which are more distant and obscure ; whether 

 we look backwards or forwards, our vision is speedily arrested by an impene- 

 trable veil. 



On the subjects I have chosen you will probably think I have travelled 

 backwards far enough. I have dealt to some extent with the present. 



The retrospect, however, may be useful to show what great works were 

 done in former ages. 



Some things have been better done than in those earlier times, but not all. 



In what we choose to call the ideal we do not surpass the ancients. Poets 

 and painters and sculptors were as great in former times as now ; so, pro- 

 bably, were the mathematicians. 



In what depends on the accumulation of experience, we ought to excel 

 our forerunners. Engineering depends largely on experience ; nevertheless, 

 in future times, whenever difficulties shall arise or works have to be accom- 

 plished for which there is no precedent, he who has to perform the duty 

 may step forth from any of the walks of life, as engineers have not unfre- 

 quently hitherto done. 



The marvellous progress of the last two generations should make every one 

 cautious of predicting the future. Of engineering works, however, it may 

 be said that their practicability or impracticability is often determined by 

 other elements than the inherent difficulty in the works themselves. 

 Greater works than any yet achieved remain to be accomplished — not, 

 perhaps, yet awhile. Society may not yet require them ; the world could 

 not at present afford to pay for them. 



The progress of engineering works, if we consider it, and the expenditure 

 upon them, has already in our time been prodigious. One hundred and sixty 

 thousand miles of railway alone, put into figures at ^20,000 a mile, amounts 

 to 3200 million pounds sterling ; add 400,000 miles of telegraph at =£100 a 

 mile, and 100 millions more for sea canals, docks, harbours, water and sani- 

 tary works constructed in the same period, and wo get the enormous sum of 

 3340 millions sterling expended in one generation and a half on what may 

 undoubtedly be called useful works. 



The wealth of nations may be impaired by expenditure on luxuries and 

 war ; it cannot be diminished by expenditure on works like these. 



As to the future, we know we cannot create a force; we can, and no 

 doubt shall, greatly improve the application of those with which we arc ac- 

 quainted. "What are called inventions can do no more than this ; yet how 

 much every day is being done by new machines and instruments. 



