The Exhibition of 1851

[Otto]

The Exhibition of 1851
The Speech of H.R.H. The Prince Albert, K.G., F.R.S., at The Lord
Mayor's Banquet, in the City of London, October 1849.

I conceive it to be the duty of every educated person closely to study
and watch the time in which he lives; and as far as in him lies, to
add his mite of individual exertion to further the accomplishment of
what he believes Providence to have ordained. Nobody, however, who has
paid any attention to the features of our present era, will doubt for
a moment that we are living at a period of most wonderful transition
which tends rapidly to the accomplishment of that great end to which
indeed, all history points -- the realization of the unity of mankind.
Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the peculiar
characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but rather a
unity, the result and product of those very national varieties and
antagonistic qualities. The distances which separated the different
nations and parts of the globe are gradually vanishing before the
achievements of modern invention, and we can traverse them with
incredible ease; the languages of all nations are known and their
acquirements placed within the reach of everybody; thought is
communicated with the rapidity and even by the power of lightning.

On the other hand, the great principle of the division of labour which
may be called the moving power of civilization, is being extended to
all branches of science, industry and art. Whilst formerly the
greatest mental energies strove at universal knowledge, and that
knowledge was confined to a few, now they are directed to
specialities, and in these again, even to the minutest points; but the
knowledge acquired becomes at once the property of the community at
large. Whilst formerly discovery was wrapt in secrecy, the publicity
of the present day causes, that no sooner is a discovery or invention
made, than it is already improved upon and surpassed by competing
efforts: the products of all quarters of the globe are placed at our
disposal, and we have only to choose what is the cheapest and best for
our purposes, and the powers of production are intrusted to the
stimulus of competition and capital.

So man is approaching a more complete fulfilment of that great and
sacred mission which he has to perform in this world. His reason being
created after the image of God, he has to use it to discover the laws
by which the Almighty governs His creation, and, by making these laws
his standard of action, to conquer nature to his use -- himself a
divine instrument. Science discovers these laws of power, motion and
transformation; industry applies them to raw matter which the earth
yields us in abundance, but which becomes valuable only by knowledge;
art teaches us the immutable laws of beauty and symmetry, and gives to
our productions forms in accordance with them.

Gentlemen, the Exhibition of 1851 is to give us a true test and a
living picture of the point of development at which the whole of
mankind has arrived in this great task, and a new starting point from
which all nations will be able to direct their further exertions.


The Illustrated London News, 11 October 1849. [1849-10-11]
http://pages.zoom.co.uk/leveridge/albert.html