49G

OCCASIONAL DIFFICULTIES JX APPRECIATING CLAIMS.

‘Class XXII.

appreciab le extent, traceable to the direct fostering care,or to the controlling influence of the Government . It hastaken its own course. It is a vigorous and independentmanufacturing system arising out of the substitution ofmachinery for hand labour, wherever it was practicable;a system which, not only impelled by necessity, butinduced ay interest, developed itself solely or chiefly inthe first instance in the direction of the indispensable,the usefu'., and the convenient; and which, by a naturalprogressi.'D, is tending towards the ornamental; and isnow, iu fact, exhibiting signs of the fermentation con-sequent cn the insertion of the new leaven of taste andrefinement. Whatever its progress in particular cases, ithas followed this course on the whole; and in this respectit presents a contrast to the industry of some of the morepowerful nations of the continent of Europe . That ofFrance , h particular, may be said to have proceeded byan opposite course. It started with an artistic system ofmanufactire, patronized and supported by Government influence and resources; and its progress has, for themost part, been downwards from the supply of the arti-ficial demands of luxury and refinement, to the neces-sary denunds of utility and comfort. There can be noquestion whatever about the pre-eminent excellence ofthe national ornamented manufactures of France ; butthere is as little doubt that, commercially considered, thispre-emimnee is to a great extent artificially maintained.It is not so much the result of a healthy, independent,self-relying, and self-supporting system of manufacture,of which machinery is the basis, and which owes its ex-istence to private enterprise and capital, and its directionto commercial demand, as of a patronage and an expen-diture, which disregard both cost and immediate profit.

The Jury, however, must not be considered to offer anyopinion h?re on the question whether it be advisable inany case, :hat a Government should apply its influenceand resources to the promotion of certain branches ofindustry, >r to speak more strictly, should monopolisethose braiches:—they are desirous merely of directingattention :o the fact that this is done in France , and someother continental countries (as, for example, in Prussia - );because tley believe that a strong characteristic of French industry s traceable to this source. It is to a greatextent ar.istic, rather than workmanlike. The artisticelement linders the development of the mechanical;precisely *.he reverse of the case in the United Kingdom ,in which .he mechanical overwhelms or overspreads theartistic. In the former, artistic skill is the startingpoint; in the latter, mechanical. In the one, artisticskill is incigenous : mechanical, for the most part exotic ;in the othtr, the reverse is generally true.

There ire, of course, exceptions, some of them re-markable in both countries; but in general it will befound tha: in France there is a tendency to emulate thenational manufactures, and to confine production to thesupply of expensive luxuries, which is injurious to thedevelopment of useful industry ; while in the United Kingdom 'he utilitarian principle has tended to hinderthe development of taste. The exceptions are, however,hopeful 01 both sides; and if it cannot be said that asyet either has solved the problem how the artistic andthe mechaiical elements of industrial perfection arc to beduly adjusred, a great step has been gained towards itssolution b; r the opportunities of comparison afforded bythe Exhibition of 1851, which, in that respect, the Juryare confident must prove beneficial to the general interestsof industry and manufacture.

In the foregoing remarks on ornamented manu-factures, reference has been chiefly made to those ofFrance ani of the United Kingdom , because the Juryconceived Iiat, so far as the points under considerationwere concerned, these two might be safely assumed asrepresentatives of opposite systems, which are more orless folloved, in either direction, by other countries.More obvitus extremes might, perhaps, have been foundin the Un.ted States of America , on the one side, andsome oriental nations on the other; the former followingalmost exclusively the utilitarian and mechanical system—the latte’, the artistic ; but the examples adduced willadmit of a sufficiently extended application.

It must now, however, be noticed that, in the viewtaken by the Jury of the contents of Class XXII., theyhave gone no further than the actual character of theobjects brought before them. They have taken them asthey found them; and, placing them all, for the time, onan equal footing, have estimated their merits by simplecomparison. It was obvious, indeed, that the mereactualities of the Exhibition must, in the main, be thesole objects of their criticism: the actual merit of a work,independently of the circumstances under which it wasproduced, must be the ground of their award. No othercourse was open to them but this. Wherever meritappeared must be recognized for its own sake: when acomparison was instituted between the similar produc-tions of different countries, the basis of such comparisonmust be confined within the walls of the Exhibition.

It is proper, therefore, to advert to some consequencesresulting from this necessity imposed on the Jury.

In the first place, single specimens of a manufacturehave come before them, of the highest merit in them-selves, which, however, are unaccompanied by anv evi-dence either that the high excellence they display'is notexceptional, or that a profitable industry,' of the kind towhich they belong, has any existence* in the countrywhence they are sent. Yet these single examples, per-haps the unusual fruit of individual skill, are broughtinto comparison and competition with works of the samesort produced iu other countries in the ordinary courseof commercial enterprise.

To take another case: contributions, which, thoughfew in number, are yet sufficient to evince the existenceof a branch of industry, come from countries where theycan be produced only at a cost which places them beyondthe reach of moderate fortunes. In such a case it isquite clear that the amount of hand labour bestowed onornamentation and finish becomes a secondary considera-tion ; yet these must be compared, in point of actualmerit, with manufactures of the same kind producedunder a rigid economy of material and labour, andintended for ordiuary purchasers.

Or again : specimens of manufacture are contributedby Government establishments, in which the cost ofproduction, and, at least, immediate profits are dis-regarded, which nevertheless enter into competitionwith the efforts of a self-supporting industry in othercountries.

Cases such as these make it evident that an actualsuperiority in the specimens exhibited cannot be assumedas the index of an industrial and commercial superioritv,unless it can be shown that those specimens have beenproduced under the ordinary conditions of commercialenterprise. No one doubts that a branch of ornamentedmanufacture may be carried to the highest perfection,both mechanical and artistic, in any country, provideddue means are used for that purpose, with little or noregard to outlay and profit. It is almost a matter ofcourse that manufactures so protected, should be superiorto those which are carried on under all the difficultiesand embarrassing obstacles that beset remunerative in-dustry. The wonder is rather that the produce of thelatter, having no allowance made for the disadvantages itlabours under, should be able to bear so well a com-parison in point of actual results.

The Jury, then, while they have willingly rewardedmerit wherever it lias appeared, have at the same timeregarded that merit with greater satisfaction when itwas found in the productions of a self-supporting andremunerative industry. They confess that they havelooked with greater interest among the contributionsfrom abroad for evidences of a healthy, useful, widelv-extended, and self-supporting industry, than for remark-able proofs of skill in particular manufactures. On thispoint they wish that it had been in their power to haveentered at some length; but so many questions areinvolved iu the consideration of it which are foreign tothe purpose of this Report, that they must content them-selves with a very general statement of some observationsthey have made.

In Egypt , Persia , Turkey , Tunis , and India , metallurgyand a certain knowledge of alloys date from remote