President's Address for the year 1887. xiii 



wealthiest of men lived in a narrow groove. Their attention 

 was occupied with the small affairs of their own little sphere. 

 The most stirring events, the most startling changes might 

 occur a few hundred miles away, but the news if it arrived 

 at all, came so late and in so imperfect a form, that people 

 failed fully to realise what had happened. To the average 

 citizen, everything beyond a radius of a very few miles was 

 nebulous, unreal, mysterious. But now all is changed ; the 

 telegraph and the newspaper acting in concert, suppty full, 

 complete, and prompt intelligence of the public events 

 of the whole civilized world to the humblest member of 

 the community, while the facilities of travelling enable a 

 thousand persons to see the great and famous cities of the 

 world, when one saw them a half century ago. Is it not 

 reasonable to suppose that when these favouring influences, 

 which can hardly be said to have been in action to any 

 great extent until the last twenty years, have had full play 

 for a century, the average human intelligence will be 

 stimulated and human sympathies broadened to an extent 

 beyond all present imagining ? The day was when • the 

 world was divided into small communities, distrustful of 

 each other, when the word stranger was synonymous with 

 enemy, when kindness, honesty, and truthfulness were 

 supposed to be duties only within the small circle of the 

 family or tribe, and when the traveller to other lands often 

 paid the penalty of his curiosity with the loss of his life or 

 liberty. The day is coming and that right speedily, when 

 all men shall be brothers, when information, sympathy, and 

 assistance in time of calamity shall flow to the farthest ends 

 of the earth ; and in bringing about this great and glorious 

 consummation, the electric telegraph will have been one of 

 the most potent agents. 



I have spoken somewhat fully about the telegraph, owing 

 to its Jubilee being practically coincident with that of the 

 present reign. But tliere are other branches of applied 

 science which, if they did not exactly originate in the 

 eventful year 1837, have, nevertheless, advanced tenfold 

 more during the Jubilee period than they had ever done before. 



