It is well known, that in the manufacture or preparation of most
articles in the arts, the main cost lies in the judicious application
of skilled labour. The value of the raw material is usually of
comparative small amount. A pound's worth of iron makes six hundred
pounds' worth of penknives; and cotton, which in the state of gingham
may be bought at 3d. per yard, is sold for the same weight as gold in
threads for Brussels lace.
It is therefore obvious, that the great advantage of cheap raw
material is in the rude stages of manufactures, or when our skill in
production is not inferior to that possessed by our neighbours. In a
manufacture in which the cost of the finished article is several
hundred times the price of the materials used to make it, it is skill,
and not the original cost of the material, that determines successful
competition.
We find that all European nations except England, have accepted this
fact as a principle of state, and have founded schools and colleges to
train their industrial population in the knowledge of art and science,
which are the only true foundations of practical skill in an advanced
stage of civilisation. In fact, we in this country have for some years
seen this truth, so far as art is involved, and have established
Schools of Design; but we have forgotten that art in industry is
chiefly used to adorn the productions of science, and have neglected
the latter. What circumstances have happened in the last few years in
the history of the world, that compel an allusion to this neglect in a
speech from the throne?
The marking features of our age are the great economy of time, and the
practical abbreviation of space. Coal and iron are now transported by
other means than by slow-going trains or coast-hugging luggers. Iron
horses, which feed on coal and drink only water, go screaming over the
country at a gigantic pace, dragging with them the whole produce of
coalmines and ironworks. Marine monsters, related to these, plough the
ocean, and scatter our natural riches over the world, receiving in
exchange the produce of other climes. The earth is bound round by
chains, which render geographical distribution arbitrary distinctions,
and enable thought to be reciprocated without being arrested by
distance in space. Blind must be the nation that does not see in all
this an alteration of conditions, which introduce new elements into
the competition of industry. The changes may be summed up in the
remark, that as improved locomotion distributes raw material to all
lands at a very slightly increased cost for the transit, manufacturing
competition among nations is resolved into a race for intellectual
pre-eminence.
This truth is less likely to be speedily acknowledged by us, because
if our native science languishes, we have yet capital to import it;
and we do not see that this is only accelerating our overthrow. But
the relative influence of abundance in raw material, and the
application of science to its development, may be seen by an
illustration from a barbarous country, in which the former is
plentiful, and the latter is beginning to shine on it by means of an
enlightened prince.
Siam, as our readers know, is an important kingdom situated between
the Burman Empire on the one hand, and Cochin-China on the other. It
abounds in natural resources, but exports only sugar, spices, drugs,
and lead, and these only in comparatively small quantity; yet it has
gold enough to make pavements for the sacred white elephants, and to
throw down into the unfathomed abyss in the Cavern of the Sun. Of
antimony, there are stores sufficient to render lustrous the eyes of
the black-teethed beauties of Siam; while silver, iron, copper, lead,
and fuel, are known to abound in these favoured regions. Yet with all
these local advantages, it is nearly certain that we could, in spite
of the distance, successfully compete with the productions of copper
and iron in their own markets, because we have applied science to
their extraction and preparation.
Siam, like nations nearer home, is very proud of its own industry, and
of its position among the states of the earth; and it may well be,
seeing that its king is hereditary lord of the stars, and gives them
permission to move in their orbits. The presumptive heir to the stars
thought one day he would like to know what Europeans believed of his
celestial powers, so he studied mathematics and astronomy from English
books, afterwards extending his knowledge to navigation, to the
natural sciences, and to English literature. Prince Chow Faa, who has,
since April 1851, succeeded his sensual and ignorant brother, under
the new appellation of King Somdet Phra Chom Klow, found his knowledge
of science thus acquired a prodigious power in the improvement of his
future terrestrial kingdom, although his celestial possessions
vanished at the same time. Like Prince Henry of Portugal, the Siamese
prince believed that the only princely talent worth cultivating, was
'the talent to do good;' and under his mental vigour, this distant
kingdom began to develop in a wonderful manner. Like Peter the Great,
he founded dockyards, and built ships of war equal to first-class
English vessels, navigating them, not by eyes painted in front, as of
old, but by chronometers and Greenwich tables. He introduced European
discipline into the army, and taught it how to use artillery. He
obtained miners of talent to examine into his mines, and the mode of
working in them; but in his reforms he awakened the jealousy of the
king and of the priesthood, and for the last few years has been
obliged to conceal his talents and good designs under the yellow garb
of a priest, which he threw off in the April of last year, a few days
previous to the opening of our Great Exhibition.
In this case of a semi-barbarous nation, we see clearly that knowledge
is power, and more surely is it so with regard to competing civilised
nations. We, too, have a prince highly educated in science and in art,
who is endeavouring to impress upon his nation the benefits of
science. At the same time that the Siamese prince threw off the yellow
robe of superstition and ignorance, the prince of this country invited
all nations to throw off their robes of prejudice and vanity, and, in
his own words, to commence at 'this new starting-point, from which all
nations will be able to direct their future exertions.' It was a
capital idea to make each nation the judge of its own position, by
shewing to what point other states had attained. Our thinking men--our
Brewsters, Herschels, Babbages, and a host of others--have declared
that our deficiencies arise from neglecting science in its application
to industry; and the general feeling of the public has ratified this
judgment by their consent. In another article, we will allude to the
means of accomplishing this want; but in the meanwhile may conclude by
drawing attention to a couple of sentences uttered on a late occasion
by Prince Albert:--'Man's reason being created after the image of God,
he has to use it to discover the laws by which the Almighty governs
his creation, and by making these laws his standard of action, to
conquer nature to his use--himself a divine instrument. Science
discovers these laws of power, motion, and transformation; industry
applies them to the raw matter which the earth yields us in abundance,
but which becomes valuable only by knowledge; art teaches us the
immutable laws of beauty and symmetry, and gives to our productions
forms in accordance with them.'