The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1876-04-01 00:00:00

THE GREAT PROGRESS OF
ENGINEERING.

The annual dinner of the Institution of Civil Engineers
was given on Saturday at Willis's Rooms, London, when a
large and distinguished company was sumptuously enter-
tained by the President and Council. Mr. G. R. Stephenson,
President of the Institution, was in the chair. After the
usual touts had been proposed, Lord Carnarvon replied on
behalf of her Majesty's Ministers, and referred to the great
influence which the engineering profession had exercised on
the development of modern civilisation both at home and in
our colonies. In the course of his speech he said :

Like some of those great public buildings which
It is your praise and credit to rear, the Govern-
ment of this country should combine many dif-
ferent things. It should be strong, and yet it
should be crowned with Ornament and grace; it
should be compact and unyielding in some parts,
and yet it should be elastie in others. (Applause.)
It should have its foundations deeply laid, and
yet it should soar up to the highest point of legi-
timate ambition. (Applause.) This, of course, is a
greet combination of qualities; it is a high ideal; and
it certainly is not for me to say that Her Majesty's
Government realize that ideal. All I would say is this
—that the task of government in these days, by whom-
eoever it be administered, by Whig or Tory, by Conserva-
tive or Liberal, is, at the very best and under all cir-
cumstances, an arduous and a heavy task, and that, in
a conscientious endeavour to discharge it, we may
justly appeal to you to apply that rule which.
I believe is not unknown to your great mecha-
nicians and engineers—to make due allowance
for the strain of ropes, for the inevitable fragility
of materials, and for the pressure of—what shall I
say ?—surrounding circumstances. (Applause.) Sir,
of all the great arts and sciences which have adorned
the last thirty or forty years, none certainly is greater
than that great art which you practise, that great pro-
fession to which you belong; and, more than that, I
would venture to say none is more closely connected
with government as such. Some Governments live
by letters, some by science, some by arts, some by
legislation, some by the conduct of great wai ; but
perhaps those Governments and those nations live
loagest in the memory of men who live through their
public works. (Applause.) These works exist when
almost everything else is forgotten, and they remain a
visible and tangible proof of the greatness of former
generations. And let me say that, of all the depart-
ments of Government in this country, none has
greater cause to be grateful to your profession than the
department over which I have the honour at this
moment to preside. If there be anything which
engineering skill has developed, it has been the great
Colonial Empire of this country. (Applause.) It has
been by your skill, your ability, that we have deve-
loped new lands that we have called into being new
countries; you have set your footmarks and the seal of
your power everywhere, and well may you say—to
borrow a quotation from another age—" Qum regio in
terris nostri non plena laboris ?" (Applause.) It is
true that in this great Colonial Empire there are as
yet none of those transcendent works which the older
civilisation and the greater wealth of Europe have
called forth. There is no Suez Canal pierced, there
are no Alps tunnelled, there is not as yet the prospect
of a Channel to be traversed by some subterranean
passage. But, on the other hand, the sum-total of
works in the Colonial Empire is simply enormous, and
the new face which during the last fifteen or twenty
years has been set upon those lands is almost more
than is credible. I say nothing of irrigation works; I
say nothing of tanks built formerly by barbaric Sove-
reigns, and which have been redeemed from decay in
our time; I say nothing of harbours created, of break-
waters construoted, such as that great breakwater in
Ceylon, of which we heard that his Royal Highness
the Prince of Wales a few weeks ago laid the foundation
stone. But look at those great agencies of modern
civilization, railways and telegraphs, and I say that
through your instrumentality they have overspread
like a network even the face of our Colonial Empire.
(Applause.) Within the last ten or fifteen years, I
believe something like 7,000 miles of railroad have
been constructed. Certainly within the last seven
or eight years 1,500 miles have been laid down in
Australia alone. The Cape, New Zealand, Ceylon
are all pressing onward in the same race; and it was
but a few weeks since that I heard that the Governor
of Natal had turned the first sod of a railway de-
stined to run through a most difficultregion, to tap new
goldfields, and open up new and unexplored resources.
And aswith railways so with telegraphs. Some 20,000
miles are open in the great continent of Australia.
The whole of the eastern side is now surrounded by an
electric wire; the great Colonies of New South Wales,
Victoria, Queensland, and South Australia, and with-
in the last fey, days New Zealand itself, have all been
brought into confraternity with one another, and I will
'venture to say into closer relationship with the Mother
Country. (Applause.) These are great triumphs to
have accomplished; and If our Colonial Empire be, as
I believe it will be, perhaps the greatest monument
which will be left of English power, of English crea-
tiveness, of English practical genius, this, too, will be
equally remembered in times to come, that in the praise
and the credit and the honour of that great work the
Civil Engineers of England are entitled to bear at least
their full share. (Loud applause.)
The Chairman said the next toast he had to propose
was "Tire two Houses of Parliament." He had heard
or read that friends should not live too closely together.
That was generally believed to be true; but as far as
regarded the Houses by the river at Westminster it
scarcely applied. No doubt they might have their
little domestic troubles, but somehow they managed to
square up their accounts and to go on and prosper.
(A laugh.) He took that opportunity to thank both
Houses sincerely for the kind manner in Which they
always received the members of his profession when
duty called them before them. (Hear, hear.) He
begged to propose "The Houses of Lords and Com-
mons," coupled with the names of Viscount Halifax
and Mr. Lowe. (Applause.)
Viscount Halifax, in a brief and appropriate speech,
acknowledged the toast for the House of Lords; whilst
Mr. Lowe, at greater length, responded for the Home
of Commons.
The Netherlands Minister in acknowledging the
toast, "Our Visitors," said 'he supposed the task of
returning thanks for the toast had been intrusted to
him on account of his well-known sympathy with the
profession. One of the great reasons for that sym-
pathy was because he considered the profession of
the engineEr not only one of the most useful, but
one of the most independent (hear, hear) ; and
while it had the whole world for the field of its
career, it increased the wealth and the prosperity
of all countries, opened up new means of com-
munication with far distant nations, end in doing so
helped to remove unfounded and exaggerated pre-
judices. In fact, he considered engineers to be the
most successful diplomatists, and he assu, ed them he
said so without the sightest feeling of jealousy.
(Laughter and applause.) On the contrary, he con-
sidered them the diplomatiets' beat allies, for both had
the same object in view—to remove the jealousies of
nations and bring them closer together by a feeling of
common interest. He was not competent to say whether
the engineers of his own little country, as far as prac-
tical skill went, were to be put on the same level with
those of England; but he was proud to say that in one
branch of the profession—hydraulic engineering—they
were not far behind. (Applause.) At this very
moment the pluck and skill of the engineers of his
country were put to a very severe test in consequence
of the great floods and inundations which had occurred
In Holland during the past fortnight. (Hear, hear.)
But that was one of the trials with which, in Holland,
they knew how to deal. He hoped that in a short
time a new proof of the skill and spirit of the
isgnirogena
great subject
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engineers of Holland would be given by drain-
rsbe.(AdpAse
cpiliaefusard (Applause.) He Hthheee
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leressclatihmaned,
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the cost would be about £16,000,000 ; 750,000 hectares
tshheo wkaycitn years. work
(Applause) This would be one of tshmos
spoa t imya many successful
rucfe
friendlyaßful
annexations— (applause)—of which the topo peaceful
examples. He his
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chollopnetrdy
interest which this great country had so many times
evinced fcr his country would not fail it on thatlmes im-
portant occasion. (Applause.)
Mr. Goscfien proposed the toast of the evening
"Prosperity to the Institution;" after which the
President briefly returned thanks, and the Proceedings
terminated.

An explosion has occurred on board the Spanish
steamer Elvira, at Passages. She sank immediately, onei
there were leyeral persons killed and many injured.