161 



STEAM IX RELATION TO CORNWALL. 



Addrkss by the President, 



Sir EDWIN DURNING-LAWRRNCE, Bart., M.P. 



It is universally recognised that the employment of steam 

 power is the main factor that has changed altogether the con- 

 ditions of the life of man by enabling him — in the words of 

 Ralph Waldo Emerson — to "hitch his wagon to a star," for in 

 fact it is the power of tlie sun stored in coal or wood, etc., that 

 we are using in our engines, whether worked by steam or by the 

 explosion of gases. 



How great has been the change effected not only in our 

 material comfort but in our mental attitude was well expressed a 

 year or two since by Mr. Arthur Balfour, when he stated that 

 Dr. Priestley who died a hundred years ago (1804 J would have 

 met Dr. Hooke who died two hundred years ago ( 1 702) on 

 absolutely equal terms, but that he would have been farther away 

 from our present modern thought than he was from the ideas of 

 the old Assyrian philosophers who died five thousand years ago. 



This enormous change is undoubtedly owing almost entirely 

 to the use of steam — or if you will of heat-power — which not 

 only enables nearly everything needed for man's use to be 

 made in practically unlimited quantities but provides facilities of 

 rapid transit to all quarters of the globe while, by means of the 

 electric cable, which could never have been constructed without 

 its aid, information of passing events is brought hour by hour 

 from the most remote regions almost at the very moment of their 

 occurrence. 



Now what has Cornwall especially to do with the use of 

 steam ? I venture to put forward the claim that it was mainly in 

 order to work the mines of Cornwall that the steam engine was 

 invented and that therefore Cornwall has played a greater part in 

 the progress of the world than is generally conceded. 



