The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-27 00:00:00

T:E.E WEDGWOOD INSTITUTE,

THE (' :HANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER AND
E 11L GRANVILLE IN THE POTTERIES.
c present age of testimonials and memorials
it is a matter for surprise that the genius of the
fattier of English ceramic art should have been left
unrecognised until the year 1863. His labours now,
how,,iver, bid fair to have something like a fitting
memorial in the midst of a district in which he
for.nded a manufacture that, even in his own time,
rf.ised Staffordshire Pottery to the level of a fine
fie. The memorial fittingly takes the form of an in-
stitute for working men, in the old town of Burslem,
known in the district as "the mother of the Pot-
teries."

The ceremony of laying the foundation-stone was
performed by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone,
M.P., supported by Earl Granville, K.G., and the
Hon. Robert Lowe. No more fitting person could
have been chosen to fulfil the duty. Mr. Gladstone
arrived at Bnrslem by the 11 a.m. train from Ha-
warden Castle, and met with a very enthusiastie re-
ception from a large crowd of persons who were
assembled at the station, and who loudly cheered
the right hon. gentleman. Mr. Gladstone, who was
accompanied by Mrs. Gladstone, Miss Gladstone,
Sir Stephen Glyn, Lady Glyn, and the Rev. Mr.
Glyn, wasmet by Mr. Sheriff Hill, of Hill Pottery,
and the party proceeded at once to that gentleman's
house in carriages.
The ceremony of laying the foundation-stone was
fixed for one o'clock, at which time the hustings on
which it took place presented a very brilliant ap-
pearance, being crowded by a vast assemblage of
gaily attired ladies and gentlemen. Mr. Gladstone
and Earl,Granville on their arrival were both loudly
cheered.
The cheers which greeted the appearance of Mr.
Gladstone having subsided,
The high Sheriff stepped forward and presented
an address to the Chancelor of the Exchequer.
The, working men of the district also presented an
addri;ss.
Pee Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone,
M.P,, then
preyeeeded amidst the cheers of the spectators, to per
fo rm the ceremony of laying the foundation stone
of the new building. A splendid porcelain casket,
containing the coins of the present year, with a
scroll containing the name of the institute and the
date of the building, having been handed to him by
the 1-I!gh Bailiff, and deposited by Mr. Gladstone in
the cavity underneath the stone, which was then
gradually lowered, the right hoe. gentleman applied
the plummet line, spread the mortar, and gently
tapped. the stone with his mallet when lowered,
with. the grace and neatness of a perfect artist. The
com.pletioa of the ceremony was hailed by a burst of
cheers arid the firing of cannon.
Mr. GLIDSTONE then proceeded to deliver the fols
lowingatideess Matti:4h Bailiff, My Lords, Ladies,
and Gentlennen—lV e have now laid this stone in
honour of Josiah Wedgwood, with a view es I hope
to the per tnaueut and effectual benefit of the people
of his birthplace. The occupations and demands of
political life compel many of those who pursue it,
and myself amongst the number, to make a
rule of declining all invitations of a local
chanacte r except such as be within their
own iermsediate and personal sphere. But
when I receive, through one of your respected
representatives an invitation to co-operate with
you in the foundation of the Wedgwood Institute,
I could not hesitate to admit that a de-
sign of this kind was at least, in my
view, u.ot a local but, when properly re-
garded, rather a national design. Partly it may be
classed as national, because the manutacture of
earthenware in its varied and innumerable branches,
is fast becoming, or hes indeed become, one of our
great and distinguishing British manufactures.
But it is for another and a broader reason that I
desire tea treat the purpose you have now in hand as
a purpose of national rather than merely local or
partial interest. It is because there are certain prin-
cipl sal applicable to manufacture, by the observance
or neglect of which its products are rendered good
or, bad. These principles were applied by Wedg-
wood with a consistency and tenacity that cannot be
oo closely observed. These principles being his,
and being true, were also in no small degree peculiar
to his practice, and deserved to be in the permanent
annals of art especially associated with his name. I
am engaged, as I am aware, in a somewhat perilous
undertaking, for, having to speak to you about a
man and a business, I am obliged to begin by con-
fessing what, i I did not confess it, you would soon
discover for yourselves, namely, that of both of them
my knowledge is scanty, theoretic, and remote ;
while you breathe the air, inherit the traditions, in
some cases bear the very name of the man, and have
a knowledge of the business, founded upon experi-
ence and upon interest, in all its turns and stages,
and from its outer skin, so to speak, to its inner-
most core. It is the learner who for the moment
stands in the teacher's place, and, instead of listen-
ing with submission, seems to aim at speaking with
authority. It would be easy to enlarge in this course
of remark; but I must stop, or I shall soon demon-
strate that I ought not to be here at all. Let me,
then, offer something on the same side. First, I
have to assure you that, whatever I shall say, I
st,°l3tait with entire deference to the judgment of
confidence
who are better informed, and with a full
"Tifuleame that, if erroneous, it would be core
l'eac4`'d) and if false exploded. Secondly, as an
°eeereer according to my limited capacity and
hearts of Bathe manufacture in its various branches
--I have formed deliberately so very high
an estini
his
partijotextio: Wedgwood, in relation not merely to
industrial Production, that but to the general laws of
opportunity of stating that I am glad to have an
it
to ilting it fully and fairly, in order
to bring
thirdly, in the trialo by
the public judgment ; and
the Crown, an ce
whieh I hold as a servant to
with the ,whichindustry places me in incessant con-
tactvv,.itsre, from
amatiicenft the country in its several
-branches, I
which I feel in its the deep interest
to the principles of We to bear my testimony
speak, an apostle, ea
a moreover
was, so to
testimony any little weight
wchr! to give to that
and such a deep interest and ac:_ell such an office,
lished by it, may be likely, in
the relations estab-
qualifications to impart. Thin absence of higher
Y yeara ago it
Probably have been held by many, go it would
still be the thought of some, that „sand it may
mar
which I have now to speak are matters hi
be left to regulate themselves,
T ch
may we o yin,
trade in all its branches the
dicate for Principle
of self-regulationhasbeen for and power ti
a quarters of a century a principal function of the
nt. But the verysame stage British Parham• age in
d eocial existence which has taught
our political an e
beneficial aplication of law
us the true and ben
ehas likewise disclosed
to a,s
of political economy,
the science, and of the field of
the just limits of
n The very same age
its practical application
which has seen the State strike off the fetters of
with boldness
industry has also seen it interpose
for protection of labour. (Cheers.) The same spirit
of polity which has taken from the producer the
enjoyment of preferences paralysing to him, and
most costly to the community at largo, has offered
him the aids of knowledge and instruction, by
whatever means, either of precept or example,
Public authority could command. We may
consider the products of industry with reference to
their utility,
or to their cheapness, or to their
in-
fluence upon the condition of those who produce
them, or lastly to
Which they associate the presentation of forms and
colours agreeable
to the cultivated eye with the
attainment of the:
of
common
life highest aptitude for these purposes
(hear.) for Now, as
toi which they are properly designed.
coneiderea alone, vv, their utility and convenience
con-
sumer, who will not ulay leave that, to the
to their buycheapnes When
does not suit him.
been taken that any'
enter: "?° security has
society ihould not
be forced to pay an artificial price
members for their productions, We some of its
lee ye. the question to the anti„ o'ef. may safely
erneacturere, and of competition
flY7Ongwhat we term
.ho laws of 7712P17 and demand. A
4 time workpeople, ea, • to
aeleaao,earn
it respect to the Facory Acts,
10 laying down
that we should do wrong °.°3- ab-
stract maeim tzs an invariable rule. Generally, it
n'ion is always egniest
may be said,ithe presurn, any

legislative interference, but that upon special
grounds, and most of all where children are em-
ployed, it may sometimes not only be wsrranted,
but . required. This, however, thou .;'• I may
again revert to it, is not for to-day our special sub-
ject. We come then to the last of the heads which
I have named, the association of beauty with utility,
each of them taken according to their largest sense
in the business of industrial production. And it is
in this department that I conceive we are to look
for the peculiar pre-eminence—l will not scruple to
say, the peculiar greatness—of Wedgwood. Do not
let us suppose that when we speak either of a mat-
ter which is light and fanciful or of one which may,
like some of those I have named, be left to take care
of itself. Beauty is not an accident of things. It
pertains to their essence; it pervades the wide range
of creation—(cheers)—and, wherever it is impaired
or banished, we have in this fact the proof of the
moral disorder which pervades the world. (Cheers.)
Reject, therefore, the false philosophy of those who
will ask, " What does it matter, provided a thing
be useful, whether it be beautiful or not ?" and say
in reply that we will take our lesson from Almighty
God, who in His works bath shown us, and in His
Word also bath told us, that " He hath made every-
thing"—not one thing or another thing, bat every-
thing—" beautiful in his time." (Cheers.) Among
all the decrees of creation, there is not one more
wonderful, whether it be the movement of the hea-
venly bodies or the succession of the seasons and the
years, or the adaptation of the world and its pheno-
mena to the conditions of human life, or the struc-
ture of the eye or hand, or any other part of the
frame, of man—not one of these is more wonder-
ful than the profuseness with which the mighty
Maker has shed over the works of His hand an
endless and boundless beauty. (Loud cheers.)
And to this constitution of things outward the
constitution and mind of man, deranged although
they be, still answer from within. Down to the
humblest condition of life, down to the lowest and
most backward grade of civilisation, the nature of
man craves, and seems as if it were even to cry
aloud, for something—some sign or token at the
least of what is beautiful in some of the many
spheres of mind or sense. (Cheers.) It is that
which makes the Spitalfields weaver, amid the
murky streets of London, train canaries and bull-
finches to sing to him at his work; that leads the
peasant of Pembrokeshire to !paint the outside of
his cottage in lively colours; and prompts in the
humbler classes of women a desire for some little
personal ornament, certainly not without its dan-
gers—for what sort of indulgence can ever be
without them P yet sometimes, perhaps, too
sternly repressed from the high and luxurious
places of society. We trace the operation of this
principle yet more conspicuously in a loftier region
in that instinct of rational and Christian piety
which taught the early masters of the fine arts to
clothe the noblest objects of our faith, and espe-
cially the idea of the sacred person of our Lord, in
the noblest fortes of beauty that their minds could
conceive or their hands could execute. (Cheers.)
It is, in short, difficult for human beings to harden
themselves at all points against the impression and
the charm of beauty. (Cheers.) Every form of
life that can be called in any sense natural will
admit them. 1 know not whether there is any one
among the many species of human aberration that
renders a man so entirely callous as the lust of gain
in its extreme degrees. That passion, where it has
full dominion, excludes every other. It shuts out
even what might be called redeeming infirmities ;
it blinds men to the sense of beauty as much as to
the perception of justice and right. Cases might
be named of countries where greediness for money
holds dominion, and where unmitigated ugliness is
the principal characteristic of industrial products,
On the other hand, I do not helleae it extravagant
to say that the pursuit of the element of beauty in
the business of production will be found to act with
a genial character and refined influence on the com-
mercial spirit; that up to a certain point it is in the
nature of a preservative against some of the moral
dangers that beset trade and manufacturing enter-
prise ; and that we are justified in regarding it not
merely as an economical benefit—not merely as con-
tributing to our work an element of value—not
merely as supplying a particular faculty of human
nature with proper food—but as a liberalising and
civilising power, and an instrument in its own sphere
of moral and social improvement. Indeed, it would
be strange if a deliberate departure from what we
see to be the law of nature in its outward sphere was
the road to a close conformity with its innermost or
highest laws. But now let us not conceive that,
because the love of beauty finds for itself a place in
the general heart of mankind, therefore we need
never make it the object of special atteution, or put
in action special means to promote and uphold it;
for, after all, our attachment.to it is a matter of
degree, and of degree which experience has shown
to be in different places, and in different times, inde-
finitely variable. We may not be able to reproduce
the time of Pericles, or of the Cinque Cento ; but
yet it depends upon our own choice whether we
shall or shall not have a title to claim kindred,
however remotely, with them. What we are bound
to is this, to take care that everything we make
shall, in its kind and class, be as good as we can
make it. When Dr. Jelineon, whom Staffordshire
must ever place among her most distinguished
ornaments, was asked by Mr. Boswell how he had
attained to his extraordinary excellence in conver-
sation, he replied that he had no other rule or system
than this, that whenever he had anything to say,
he tried to say it in the beet manner that he was
able. (Hear, hear.) It is this perpetual striving
after excellence on the one hand, or the want of
such effort on the other, which, mote than the ori-
ginal difference of gifts, contributes to bring about
the differences we see in the works and characters
of men. Such efforts are more rare in proportion
as the object in view is higher, the reward more
distant. In the application of beauty to works of
utility the reward is generally distant. A
new element of labour is imported into the
process of production, and that element, like
others, must be paid for. In the modern publica-
tion which the firm of Wedgwood and Bentley put
forth under the name of a catalogue, but which
really contains much sound and useful information
on the principles of industrial art, they speak plainly
on the subject. They say—" There is another error
common with those who are not over well acquainted
with the particular difficulties of a given art. They
often say that a beautiful object can be manufac-
tured as cheaply as an ugly one. A moment's re-
flection would undeceive them." The beautiful oh-
ism would be dearer than one perfectly bare and
bead ; not because utility is compromised for the
ake of beauty, but because there• may be more
manual
labour, and there must be more thought in
the originalwh design. Therefore the manufacturer,
hditescoipseirnoaeaaluieletyttlitnheought must and ought to be to cheaPela
count of thle"cg:
that can be ,bteenaduetyavouring to dispense with all
Pared, is under much temptation to
economical laws stand as an item in the he-
medeaery:;:tetorauaourtkbry,
sainisneoetthmheesr
tut production. So the pressure of
of trade. Anti
yeeltin severely on the finer elements
as in other easeee_init may be argued that in this,
bility and eoliths the ease, for example, of dura-
first is not cheapY;jitnhatthewrcil appears cheapest at
two reasons. In the a Ong run, And this for
Brat place, because in the long
Price for beauty.
run mankind are willing to
Franco is the second cote
f foere:italbre the
and her command o
principle that taste h real ele-
gance referable in a great
world,
of her productions, to
the establish in the most
all an ex-
einhtaenigligeaibbilee vfoarlmue But there seems
way by which the law of nature arrives at its re-
venue upon the shortsighted trust for cheapness.
W hey in, sq, by finding beauty expensive, We
decline to pay
artists for producing it, Then
em-
ployment ceases, and they disappear. Presently We
find that works reduced to utter baldness do not sa-
tisfy. We have to meet
a demand for embellish-
ment of some tried,
"t production. We
who knew the laws and mode of •9
but we have starved out the race
substitute strength for fle"-
nr, quantity for
quAty. and we end by producillg
t..-s) or hideous maltorma
incongruous
bons, of a greater cost than would have sufficed
for the nourishment among us of chaste and
virgin art. So the penalty of
error may be
certain ; but
the reward of sound judgment and

right action, depending as it does, not on to-day
or to-morrow, but en the long future, is remote.
In the same proportion it is wise to call in aid all
the secondary resources we can command. Among
these instruments, and among the best of them, is
to be reckoned the foundation of institutes like

this, for they not only supply the willing with
means of instruction, but they bear witness from

age to age to the principle on which they are
founded. They carry down the tradition of good
times through the slumber and the night of bad
times, ready to point the path to excellence when
the dawn returns again. I heartily trust the
institute may be one worthy of its founder and of
its object. But now let us draw nearer to the
immediate character and office of him whom I may

call our hero. His most signal and charactoriitic
merit lay in the fineness and fullness of his per-

ception of the true law of what we term industrial
art; or, in other words, of the application of the
higher art to industry, the law which teaches us
to aim first at giving to every object the greatest

possible degree of fitness and convenience for
its purpose, and next at making it the vehicle for
the highest degree of beauty which compatibility
for that fitness and convenience it will bear ; it
does not substitute the secondary for the primary
end, but recognises as part of its business the study
to harmonise the two. To have a strong grasp of
this principle, and to work it out to its result in
the details of a vast and varied manufacture is
praise high enough for any man. But it was
higher and more peculiar in the case of Wedgwood
than any other man. For that truth of art which
he saw so clearly, and which lies at the root of
excellence, was one of which England has not
usually had a perception at all corresponding
with her other rare endowments. She has long
taken lead among the nations of Europe for the
cheapness of her manufactures. Not so for
their beauty ; and if the day shall ever come
when she shall be as eminent for taste as she is now
for economy of production, my belief is that result

will probably be due to no other single man in so
great a degree as to Wedgwood. This part of the
subject, however, deserves a fuller consideration.
There are three regions given to man for the exer-
cise of his faculties in the production of objects and
the performance of acts conducive to civilisation and
to the ordinary use of life. Of these, one is the
homely sphere of simple utility. hat is done is
done for some purpose of absolute necessity, or im-
mediate use; what is produced is produced with an
almost implicit regard to its value and exchange—
to the market, the piece, and day. A dustman can-
not be expected to move with the grace of a fairy,
nor can his cart be constructed on the flowing lines
of a Greek chariot of war: Not but that, even in
this unpromising domain, beauty also has her place,
Then there is the lofty sphere of pure thought, and
its numerous organs ; the sphere of poetry and the
highest arts. Here, again the place of utility is
narrowed, and the production of the beautiful in one
or other of its innumerable forms is the supreme if
not the only object. I believe it to be undeniable
that in both of these spheres, widely separated as
they are, the faculties of Englishmen, and the dis-
tinctions of England have been of the very first
order. In the power of economical production she
example--she must be
is at the head of all the nations of the earth. If in
the fine arts—painting for
content with a second place, yet in poetry, which
ranks even higher than painting, she may fairly
challenge all the !micas of Christendom, and none
but Italy can as yet enter into serious competition
with the land of Shakspeare. (Cheers.) I for one
should admit that, while thus pre-eminent in the
pursuit of pure beauty on one side, and of unmixed
utility on the other, she has been far less fortunate
in that intermediate region where art is brought
into contact with industry, and where the pair may
wed together. This is a region alike
vast and
diversified. Upwards it embraces architecture—an
art which, while it affords the noblest scope for grace
and grandeur, is, or rather ought to be strictly tied
dowu to the purposes of convenience. Down-
wards it extends to a very large proportion of the
products of human industry; but, while all the
objects of trade and manufacture admit of funda-
mental differences in point of fitness and unfitness,
probably the major part of them admit of funda-
mental differences also in point of beauty or ugli-
ness. Utility is not to be sacrificed for beauty, but
they are
helpful to each other, and it may he safely asserted
generally compatible and often positively
that the periods when the study of
beauty have
been neglected have usually been marked not by a
more successful pursuit of utility, but by a general
decline in the energies of man. In Greece,
the foun-
tain head of our instruction on these matters, the
season of her highest historic splendour was also
summer of her classic poetry and art; and in con-
templating her architecture we scarcely know
whether most to admire the acme of beauty, or the
perfect obedience to the laws of mechanic contriv-
ance. The arts of Italy were the offspring of her
freedom—(cheers)—and with its death they lan-
guished and decayed. In the particular department
of industrial art, France perhaps, of all modern
nations, has achieved the greatest distinction, and
and there is nocountry which has displayed, through
a long course of ages, a more varied activity, or
acquired a greater number of titles to renown. It
would be easy to show that the reputation which
England has long enjoyed with the trading world
has been for cheap and not beautiful productions.
In some great branches of manufacture we were
until late dependent upon patterns from abroad. In
others our work presented nothing but a dreary
waste of capricious ugliness. Some of us remember
with what avidity, some thirty or forty years back,
the ladies of England smuggled every article of
dress and ornament from France. That practice has
now ceased, partly perhaps because there are no
longer any duties to evade—
(laughter)—but also
because the preference has, in
some degree, been
modified, because of the great progress made in the
taste which this country applies to industry. I
have understood that for some of the textile
fabrics patterns are net imported only, but
also exported and exchanged. Let us not treat
this as a matter of blame to our forefathers and
commendation to ourselves. It has not been suffi-
ciently considered what immense disadvantages
were 'brought on the country as respects the appli-
cation of fine art to industry by the great revolu-
tionary war. Not only was the engrossing cha-
racter of a deadly struggle unfavourable to all such
purpose, but our communion with the civilised
world was placed under restraint, and we were in
great measure excluded from a resort to those cities
and countries which possessed the greatest abund-
ance of examples bequeathed by former excellence.
Nor could it be expected that Kings and Govern- ,
ments, absorbed in a conflict of life and death, and
dependent for the means of sustaining it on enor-
mous and cotstant loans, would spare either
thought or money from war and its imperious de-
mands for these, the most pacific among all the
purposes of peace. At any rate, I take it to be
nearly certain that the period of the war was a pe-
riod of general and progressive depression and even
degradation, in almost every branch of industrial
art, that the fabrics of your own manufacture, for
example, were in point of beauty, much inferior to
what they had been at a former time—that the
older factories had in some cases died out, in others,
such a Worcester, for instance, they declined—and
that whereas Wedgwood is said to have exported
five-sixths of what he made, we had not only lost
any hold such as he had gained upon the foreign
market, but we owed the loss in part, at least, to our
marked decline in excellence and taste. I submit,
however, that, considering all that England has
that
done in the sphere of pure beauty on the one side,
and in the sphere of cheap and useful manufacture
wheremadeh
on. the other, it not only is needless, but would be
e the illustrious
ierarlational, to suppose that she lies under any
honourableradi-
r intermediate
ef for excelling xtcwe 10l i
joinng alsoha n
ham's,
n
not think that
a meteoric n°
Wedgwood gained the distinctions which
have
Im, in the language of Mr. Smiles,
"Wedgwood." (Cheers.) I do
Wedgwood should be regarded as
n strange phenomenon,
more native to us and
atoneof
thei n from
usr
industry,
appearance
siheaven,ngle p e
oraf.
ours than
happy accident without
Rare, indeed, example and without re-
turn.such men in the history
hars it in4y here been Mnng
ourselves ; for, what-

ever the merit of others, such in particular as Mr.
Minton, yet I for one should scruple to place any of
them in the same class with Wedgwood. No one is
like him—no one, it may almost be said, is even
second to him ; but the line on which he moved is a
line in which every one engaged in manufacture, of
whetever branch, may move after him and like him.

And as it is the wisdom of man universally to watch
against his besetting errors, and to strengthen him-
self in his weakest point, so it is the study and fol-
lowing of Wedgwood and Wedgwood's principles

which may confidently be recommended to our pro-

ducers as the specific cure for the specific weakness
of English industry. Of imagination, fancy, taste,
of the higher cultivation in all its forms, this great
nation has abundance; of industry, skill, persever-
ance, mechanical contrivance, it has a yet larger
stock, which overflows our narrow bounds and floods

the world. The one great want is to bring these
two groups of qualities harmoniously together ; and
this was the peculiar excellence of Wedgwood—his
excellence peculiar in such a degree as to gain his
name a place above every other, so far as I know,
in the history of British industry—(cheers)—and
remarkable and entitled to fame even in the history
of the industry of the world. (Cheers.) We make
our first introduction to Wedgwood about the year
1741, as the youngest of a family of 13 children, and

as put to earn his bread, at 11 years of age, to the
trade of his father, and in the branch of a " thrower."

Then comes the well-known attack of smallpox, the
settling of the dregs of his disease in the lower part
_ _ .

of the leg, and the amputation of the limb, render-
ing him lame for life. It is not often that we have
such palpable occasions to record our obligations to
the smallpox—(a laugh)—but in the wonderful
ways of Providence, that disease, which came to him
as a twofold scourge, was probably the occasion of
his subsequent excellence. It prevented him from
growing up to be the active, vigorous English work-
man, possessed of all his limbs, and knowing right
well the use of them. It put him upon consider-
ing whether, as he could not be that, he might
not be something else and something greater.
(Cheers.) It sent his mind inward, and drove him
to meditate upon the laws and secrets of his art ; the
result was that he arrived at the perception and the
grasp of them, which might perhaps have been

- _
envied, and certainly had been owned, by an
Athenian potter. Relentless criticism has torn to
pieces the old legend of King Numa receiving in a
cavern, from the nymph Egeria, the laws that were
to govern Rome; but no criticism can shake the re-

cord of that illness and mutilation of the boy, Josiah
Wedgwood, which made for him a cavern of his bed-
room an oracle of his own inquiring, searching,
meditative and fruitful mind. (Cheers.) From
those early days of suffering—weary, perhaps, to
him as they went by, but bright, surely, in the re-
trospect, both to him and to us—a mark seems at
once to have been set upon his career. But those
who would dwell upon his history have still to de-
plore that many of the materials are still wanting.
It is not creditable to his country or his art that
the life of Wedgwood should still remain unwritten
Here is a man who, in the well-chosen words of his
epitaph, "converted a rude and inconsiderable
manufacture into an elegant art—into an imp'ortant
branch of national commerce." Here is a man who,
beginning as it were from zero, had, unaided by
the Royal or national gifts which were founa neces•
sary to uphold the glories of Levres, Chelsea, and
of Dresden, produced works, truer, perhaps, to the
Inexorable laws of art than the fine fabrics that
proceeded from those establishments, and scarcely
less attractive to a polished taste. (Cheers.) Here
is a man who found his business cooped within a
narrow valley by the want of even tolerable com-
munications, and who, while he devoted his mind
to lifting that business from meanness, and ugliness,
and weakness, to the highest excellence of material
and form, had surplus energy to take a leading part
in great engineering works like the Grand Trunk
Canal from the Mersey to the Trent, which
made the raw material of his industry abun-
dant and cheap, which supplied a vent for the
manufactured article, and opened for it mate-
riahy a way to the outer world. Lastly, here
is a man who found his country dependent
upon others for its supplies of all the finer
earthern ware, but who, by his single strength, re-
versed the inclination of the scaie, and scattered the
products of his genius and skill all over the breadth
of the Continent of Europe. And here I would say
that since I come to this room I have received a let-
ter, in which occurs the following quotation from
the travels in England of a French gentleman; M.
Panes St. Fond. He says, referring to Wedgwood,
" His excellent workmanship, its solidity, the ad-
vantage it possesses of standing the action of fire,
its fine glaze impenetrable to acids, the beauty and
variety of its forms, and its moderate price, have
created a commerce so active and unusual that, in
travelling from Paris to St. Petersburg, from Am-
sterdam to the furthest point of Sweden, from Dun-
kerque to the southern extremity of France, one is
served at every inn from English earthernware.
The same fine articles adorning the tables of Spain,
Portugal, and Italy, it provides the cargoes of ships
for the East Indies, the West Indies, and America."
(Cheers.) It is strange that the life of such a man
in this " nation of shopkeepers," as we are called,
should at this date remain unwritten ; but I have
heard with much pleasure a rumour, which I hope
is true, that such a gap in our literature is about to
be filled up. All that we know, however, of the
life of Wedgwood seems to be eminently characte-
ristic. We find the works of his earliest youth
already impressing a new character upon his trade
—a character of what may be called efficiency com-
bined with taste, and with the best basis of taste, a
loving and docile following of nature. We find him
beginning his partnerships when manhood was but
just attained, first with Harrison, secondly with
Whieldon, but last, as we might naturally expect
in the case of a spirit so energetic and expansive,
we find that in each of these cases the bed did not
give him room enough to lie on or turn in, and in
1759, as soon as his articles expire, he escapes from
the unequal yoking, and enters into business by him-
self. But this, though a natural, was not a final
stage. It was necessary that he, who was the soul,
should be the centre and head, but it was also ne-
cessary that he should surround himself at all
points with an official staff for a great, varied,
and not merely reforming, but creative work.
Hence he associated himself with Mr. Richard
Bentley as a partner, who is stated to have chiefly
superintended the London business, but who has
credit for having supplied the information necessary
to enable the foreigner to enter so largely on the
handling of classical designs. Hence he employed
Mr. Chisholm as an experimental chemist, and other
scientific men, in the several branches of the busi-
ness; hence his connection with Flaxman, which
has redounded alike to the honour of the one and of
the other. (Cheers.) It was the fashion to say
owers but that she admi-
f,and in like manner some
that Queen Elizabeth was not proved to be a
nwiostmearendowf eitantrvaaosrtdpinoazrp
might be tempted to suspect, when they see Wedg-
.
wood thus surrounded, that .his merit lay chiefly in
the choice of instruments and coadjutors, and that
to them the main part of the praise is due. The
right hon. gentleman then proceeded tebly to criti-
cise the merits of Wedgwood's productions, point-
ing out how beneficially the industry created by
the distinguished firm of Wedgwood had operated
on the population of the district in which it was
situated. Of these the right hon. gentleman said,
we find them increased in the course of some 25
years to about treble, abundantly employed, pros-
perous, and comfortable. (Cheers.) Nor was this
multiplication only without improvement, for he
goes on to quote from John Wesley, who had been
petted at Burslem in 1760, the following words ;
" I returned to Buralem. How is the whole face of
the country chsnged in about 20 years, since which
the inhabitants have continually flowed in from
every side ! Hence the wilderness is literally be-
come a fruitful field ; houses, villages, towns, have
sprung up, and the country is not improved more
than the people." (Loud cheers.) It is impossible
to conceive a testimony more honourable to Wedg-
wood ; nor can I better conclude these remarks than
by uttering the cordial hope that you, his successors,
who have during late years earned so much honour
for the taste and industry of the country, may
profit more and more effectually by the lessons
which your great foreruener has bequeathed you,