( 105 ) 
XII. 
ADDRESS. 
PROGRESS DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
By the President, Lewis Evans, E.S.A., E.R.A.S. 
Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting at Watford , 4th March , 1902. 
Ladies and Gentlemen,— 
I trust that you. will excuse me for straying somewhat from 
matters immediately connected with Natural History this evening, 
for it seemed to me that as this happens to be the first Annual 
Address to the Society in the twentieth century, I might with 
advantage bring together a few facts in illustration of the progress 
made during the past hundred years both in our own country 
and the world at large in almost every conceivable direction, and 
especially in our own neighbourhood and our own county. 
The 1st of January, 1801, the day on which the Act of Union 
incorporated the Irish Parliament in that of Great Britain, found 
the United Kingdom apparently in a very bad case. The war with 
Erance had already lasted for eight years, and had cost the nation 
nearly £160,000,000 ; and, at the opening of the new century, 
England, with about 16,000,000 inhabitants, found herself engaged 
single-handed in trying to stem Napoleon’s tide of conquest and 
to hold in check the Erench nation numbering 40,000,000; and 
whilst on the one hand, in 1801, wheat was costing 119s. per 
quarter, almost everything was exceedingly dear, and taxes were 
extremely high, on the other hand Consols were down to 62*63, 
wages were falling, and there was so much distress and discontent 
amongst the working classes as to cause riots throughout the 
country. The reigning monarch was a poorly-educated and narrow¬ 
minded man, who was, moreover, subject to mental derangement; 
and although the government of the country was in the able hands 
of the younger Pitt (who had become Prime Minister at the age 
of 23), his efforts at parliamentary reform had been fruitless, 
and the House of Commons was in no sense representative either of 
the wealth or intelligence of the country. 
As with the nineteenth century, so with the twentieth; its 
commencement was signalized by an Act of Union, namely, the 
inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia ; a political move¬ 
ment likely to be of the utmost importance to the Empire, and one 
quite unforeseen a century ago, when out of the whole Australian 
VOL. XI.—PART IV. 
