FIRST REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS.

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not impossible, for any tribunal to pronounce accurately upon the degrees of meritbelonging to Exhibitors of different nations producing articles which must be triedby different standards, it would be inexpedient to assign the Medals as rewards ofdifferent degrees of excellence of the same kind. They accordingly announcedtheir intention of instructing the Juries to reward all articles which might appearto them to possess any decided excellence, of whatever nature that excellence mightbe, and to regard the Medals rather as the means of appreciating and distinguishingthe respective characters of the subjects to be rewarded, than as distinctive marksof greater or less merit in the same class of exhibits.

On the Council of Chairmen being afterwards called together for the purpose offraming the rules for the guidance of the Juries, (which arc given in AppendixNo. XXL,) this subject was naturally one of the first to occupy their attention, andat their first meeting they agreed to recommend to the Commissioners to withdrawthe third of the proposed Medals, as a Prize Medal, and to reduce the numberto two, of which one should be given by the several J urios, with the sanction oftheir respective groups of allied J uries, to all Exhibitors whom they might judgeworthy on any ground of such a distinction, while the other should be reserved tobe given away by the Council itself only in special, and, as it were, exceptionalcases, on the recommendation of the several Juries, if sanctioned by their group, andif approved by the Council. This second, or Council Medal, was almost exclusivelyreserved as a reward for remarkable inventions, and was considered not to be appli-cable in cases where excellence of execution, however great, was the only merit tobe rewarded. The Decision of the Commission on the award of the Council Medalwill be found in Appendix No. II. A fuller account of this subject, and of the pro-ceedings of the Juries, will be found in the Report submitted by Viscount Canning ,the President of the Council of Chairmen , on presenting the awards of the Juries tothe Commissioners , and also in the reply of His Royal Highness the President ofthe Commission to that Report. (See Ap>pendix No. XIX.)

It may here be mentioned that the Commissioners decided that the third Medal)which was thus withdrawn from competition, should be appropriated to the Jurorsthemselves in testimony of their services. A set of these three Medals, togetherwith the remaining two that have been struck by order of the Commissioners, viz.,the “ Exhibitors’ Medal ” and the “ Service Medal,” is transmitted with thisReport.

llent—Exclusion of Articles — Prices.

Amongst the earliest questions which arose was one relating to the terms uponwhich articles should be admitted into the Exhibition. It was necessary that thispoint should be decided at the outset, as not only the preparation of articles, but toa great extent the amount of the subscriptions also, was found to depend upon it;besides which, it exercised considerable iniluence upon the question of the Building.As it was intended that the Exhibition should be conducted without any pecuniaryaid from the Government, differing in that respect from all the Exhibitions that had