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

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 27, 1863,

right action, depending as it does, not on to-day
or to-morrow, but on 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 had
times, ready to point the path to excellence when
the dawn returns again. I heartily trust the
institute may be ono 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 characteristic
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 s 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. IN 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 place, and day. A dustman can-
not he 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 beautifulin 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
is at the head of all the nations of the earth. If in
the fine arts—painting for example—she must be
content with a second place, yet in poetry, which
ranks even higher than painting, she may
fairly
challenge all the nations 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 lees 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
down 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 f tness 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 generally compatible and often positively
helpful to each other, and it may be safely asserted
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 no country 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—(latighter)--but also
because the prefefence 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 not 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 constant 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 ho made, we had not only lost
any bold 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
done in the sphere of pure beauty on the one side,
and in the sphere of cheap and useful manufacture
on the other, it not only is needless, but would be
"the madeillustrious him,
eeirrational, to suppose that she lies under any radi-
cal or honourable incapacity for excelling also in
thatwhre intermediate sphere where the two join hands,
Wedgwood gained the distinctions which
have
not
think that AV-‘ieVndedtg Wedgwood" ewo
language
c(lGobhie.e el‘risr.
regarded Smiles,
a strange phenomenon,
happy accident without
ours than a
rneetnon, no more native to us and
atone from heaven, a
such men in the history :f the appearance of
example and without
industry,re-
ourselvaB sfioolg., 1
what-
e pe r
turn. Rare, indeed,
he it may have been anio

ever the merit of others, such in particular as Arr.
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 Nuraa 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, bath 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 important
branch of national commerce." Here is a man who,
beginning as it were from zero, had, unaided by
the Royal or national gias which were found 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 m neriel 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
earthernware, but who, by his single strength, re-
versed the inclination of the scaje, 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.
Faugae 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 wets the soul,
should be the centre and head, but it was also ne-
cessary that ho should surround himself' at all
points with an official staff for a great, varied,
and not merely reforming, but creative work.
who
has
Hence he associated himself with Mr. Richard
Bentley as a partner, who is stated to have chiefly
credit superintended
fo r
havi tghe Londonsupplied
the business,
u information t
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
that Queen Elizabeth was not proved to be a
woman of extraordinary power, but that she admi-
nistered with vast power ;;and in like manner some
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 ably 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 ho
goes on to quote from John Wesley, who had been
Petted at Burslem in 1760, the following words :
" I returned to Burslem. How is the whole face of
.
the country chinged 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; housee, 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 thesearemarks 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 ta.cat feterunner has bequeathed you,

and may find at least one substantial part
of your reward in witnessing around you a
thriving and contented, a healthy and a happy po-
pulation.
Immediately on the conclusion of the address the
company adjourned to the Town Hall, where a
sumptuous banquet was prepared.
Earl GRANVILLE, E.G., presided. On the removal of
the cloth he gave, in appropriate terms, the toasts of the
Queen, Prince and Princess of Wales, and the rest of the
royal family, which were loyally responded to,
Mr. ADDERLEY, M.P., next proposed the Army, the
Navy, and the Volunteers, which was responded to by Vis-
count Ingestre and Major Westhead.
Mr. BERESFORD HOPE then proposed the Bishop and
Clergy of the Diocese, and ministers of all denominations.

The Bishop of Lichfield returned thanks.
The CIIIEF BAILIFF then proposed " The Health of Her
Majesty's Ministers," which was drunk amid loud cheering.

Earl GRANVILLE, in returning thanks, after a few intro-
ductory observations, said they had just heard the eloquent
speech of Mr. B. Hope, who was always found ready to
come for ,vaid to promote any object which aimed at the im-
provement of what might be termed our art-manufactures.
Some time ago he (Earl Granville) had the pleasure of read-
ing a speech of Mr. B. Hope's, in which, commenting upon
tLe recent alterations in the minute of Council of Educa-
tion, that gentleman had expressed an opinion that the prin-
ciple of payment for results should be applied to the Minis-
try. He (Earl Granville) certainly thought that it would
be somewhat difficult to apply that principle to men engaged
in the conduct of the affairs of the world, inasmuch as re-
sults did not always form a correct test of the exertions of
a Prime Minister, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer;
and also for another reason, namely, that although it
was undoubtedly true that party spirit was not so strong
in this country now as it was formerly, yet he doubted
whether it was so extinct that impartial judges could be
found to say what the amount of the salary of the Minis-
try should be. (Laughter.) He himself should cer-
tainly object to the application of any such principle, be-
cause, although he held an office of considerable dignity,
it had at the same time a smaller amount of salary attached
to it than was attached to any other office, so that he some-
times felt that he should like a little less dignity and a little
more salary. If, however, the principle of payment by re.-
sults was adopted, and he went to his right hon. friend the
Chancellor of the Exchequer and asked him for an augmen-
tation, he was afraid his right hon. friend would say,
"Where are your results ? I am sorry to disoblige you, but
on a calm reflection on the circumstances, I think I must
diminish it considerably." (Renewed laughter.) That prin-
ciple applied neither to the Prime Minister nor to the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, for he could not but think, with-
out entering into details on the subject, that considering the
tranquillity, the contentment, the order, the peace which
reigned in this country—considering that it was on peaceful
relations with all civilised nations—considering, at the same
time, that the honour and dignity of the country had ever
been preserved, many present would say, " Well, after all,
Lord Palmerston has for a long time been a faithful servant
of the State, and if pecuniary reward were an object to him,
he would deserve it as much as any statesman ever had
done." (Loud cheers.) It was impossible to listen to the
able addresses presented to the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer that day, one of them so singularly remarkable, so sa-
tisfactory for the circumstances attending those by whom
it had been presented, and stating the sentiments of work-
ing people that the recent commercial and financial legisla-
tion in this country has produced happy and useful results,
without fully coinciding in such sentiments. (Cheers.) And
when he found that the French treaty, within one year after
its passing, had produced exports of pottery to France two
or three times as much as the previous year, and when every
year such exports were increasing, he could not but think
that, so far from attempting to diminish the salary of his
right hon. friend, they would increase it to such an extent
as to allow him to indulge in his taste for; and to lavish money
on productions of ceramic art. (Laughter and cheers) Her
Majesty's Government might do wrong, and what man or
Minister was not constantly doing wrong ? But he assured
the company that they were animated in all their actions by
a sincere desire for the welfare and prosperity of their
country at home and for the maintenance of its honour and
dignity abroad. As regards the Poles, it was the policy of
Ministers to hold themselves perfectly aloof from the quarrel,
and having come to that conclusion it would have been
heartless cruelty to the Poles themselves if the British Go-
vernment had led them to believe that England would take
up arms in their cause. (Hear, hear.) With regard to
America, it was a theme almost too painful for him to touch
upon. They deplored the calamities which were over-
whelming that unhappy country, but he could not help re-
marking that it was a matter of thankfulness that in conse-
quence of the opening of our markets this country, with the
exception of one county, that of Lancaster, had suffered no
no great distress in consequence of the American war.
With respect to the different political parties engaged in
that war he would offer no opinion. Different feelings
were entertained in this country in favour of or against both
the Federal and the Confederate cause. Some of his moat
valued political friends were in favour of the Confederates,
and others entertained an equally strong feeling in favour
of the Federals. Her Majesty's Government had studied the
American question most carefully, with the most sincere
desire to arrive at an impartial view of the position in which
that country was placed, and they had arrived at the con-
clusion that,whatever might be their feelings and sympathies
one way or another, it was their duty to remain entirely
neutral in the struggle, and not to suffer any irritation which
might have been felt or expressed by either party to influ-
ence their proceedings. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) No body
of men were more sincere in their wishes that this most
lamentable internecine war should be brought to a
speedy conclusion than were her Majesty's Govern-
ment. (Hear, hear.) With respect to other points of
foreign policy, he might add that it had been the anxious
dasire of her Majesty's Government to avert what would
have indubitably been a most calamitous war between two
of our allies—namely, Denmark and Germany. (Hear,
hear.) Every one felt that it was satisfactory to see Italy
so calmly, so unostentatiously consolidating her position,
and realising those bright aspirations of which no one had
been a more eloquent exponent than his right hon. friend.
(Cheers.)
The arrangements of the day were excellent, and reflect
the greatest credit on the hon. secretary, Mr. Woodall, and
the committee of management.