THE PRINCE OF WALES'S IDEA.
rpHE vague and shadowy proposals for a fitting memorial of the Queen's Jubilee have this week taken definite shape. On Monday the papers published a letter addressed by the Prince of Wales to the Lord Mayor, suggesting that a fund
should be opened at the Mansion House for the celebration of the Royal Jubilee by the foundation of a Colonial and Indian Institute. The Institute of the Prince's suggestion is, in fact, a museum where shall be represented "the arts, the manufac- tures, and the commerce of the Queen's Colonial and Indian Empire." The obviousness and the appropriateness of such a scheme for commemorating the length and importance of her Majesty's reign make it unnecessary to elaborate any apology for the proposal. If any reign in English history deserves to be connected with the growth and progress of the Empire, it is that of the Sovereign under whose rule the town of Sydney has grown from a penal settlement to be one of the great com- mercial centres of the world ; whose name has been given to a country of which the capital, in the magnificence of its build- ings, and in the splendour and luxury of its public life, can vie with any of the cities of the New World ; and under whose authority the Indus and the Irrawaddy, Peshawur and Rangoon, have succumbed to the English arms, and have been included within that Peace of the English in which all India now lies lapt. People are too apt to think of the Victorian age as the age in which the Empire has been maintained. In truth, it is the age in which the Empire has been acquired.
It is, then, rather with the means of securing real usefulness than with the abstract fitness of the plan that we desire to deal. There can be little doubt that if established under a wise scheme of management and wisely administered, the Institute may become of immense value to England and to the component parts of the Empire. The first thought that will strike any one who approaches the consideration of the subject is the difficulty of giving one scheme of treatment to the Colonies and India, or, to distinguish more scientifically, to the self-governing English- speaking Colonies and to the Dependencies. They are held under different laws, they are peopled by different races, they worship different Gods in different tongues. You cannot in the same breath show England how the Common Law and the Parliamentary doctrine of Supply obtain in Victoria or Queensland, and how the Koran is to be applied to the Mahommedans of India. Yet, for all that, the Colonies and India must be grouped together. Diversity is so singular a factor of the Empire, that it ought to be strikingly reflected in any commemorative Institute ; and there will therefore, we should imagine, be no serious attempt to separate them. The Prince of Wales points out as some of the benefits which may accrue from his plan, the stimulation and efficient direction of emigration by more intimate know- ledge concerning our Colonies, and the reciprocal expansion of commerce and industry. He might have added, as still more important, that the proposed Institute will act as a centre of political education. The English democracy have succeeded to a vast heritage. It is necessary, if they are to direct their servants how to govern it wisely, that they should gain as much knowledge as possible concerning the various provinces over which their sway is spread. If the vestibule of the Indian Section of the Museum could be arranged so as to strikingly illustrate—and there are a hundred ways of doing it—the immense size and the immense dissimilarities of the different parts of India, the working men would soon seize the lesson, and would know what value to attach to gentlemen who, like Mr. Lalmohun Ghose, seek their suffrages as representing" the people of India." We talk so perpetually about India as if it were a place, that it is no wonder that the less educated, who cannot always be retaking their intel- lectual bearings, have begun to believe it. There is nothing like a good object-lesson to teach people relative sizes and propor- tions; and the Institute should, in fact, be an Imperial object- lesson. People, too, who could see good figures representing the Kurumbas, or any other of the aboriginal tribes of the Hills, would hardy after that consider that we were doing them in- justice by governing them without votes; nor would the man who once realised the stamina, moral and physical, of the Bengalee, any longer imagine that we are inflicting an incalculable wrong upon the inhabitants of the Gangetic Delta by protecting them from the oppressions of the Sikh or Afghan invader who would instantly appear on our departure. The commercial advantages of a permanent museum of the products of the Empire it is almost needless to point out, for the manner in which trade responds to such invitations to expand has already been shown a hundred times. Even the greatest commercial houses have not a universal eye for the possibilities of using a particular product or pushing a particular manufacture. Many an application of a new invention to trade, many a new source of wealth, might spring from such a cause. Advertisement is an essential of
mercantile progress, and a permanent Colonial and Indian Museum would be just the advertisement needed. Perhaps, how- ever, the Prince of Wales is right in putting emigration first of all in his list of benefits. Emigration, wisely undertaken, is an unmixed blessing to the working classes. It gives the man who emigrates the opportunity which no man can ever be quite content till he has had, whether he fails or not,—the oppor- tunity of making a fortune, and of emerging from the dullness of the ranks of life. It gives to the workman who stays that relief from the pressure of competition which he so much needs. With these results before them, people of the upper class constantly wonder how it is the working men are not more eager about emigration, and in general can only be induced to adopt it as a final resort from misery. They argue, "In our rank of life, the younger sons all emigrate," and call to mind the not unfrequent cases where, out of a family of six, four will have left England. "We do it easily enough," they say ; "why, then, won't the working men, where the pressure is so much greater and the induce- ments comparatively BO much higher ?" The answer, of course, rests in the fact that the one class of men know geography, and the other do not. The young man who determines to go to Florida knows where Florida is, and before he chooses. it, has been able to picture to himself, by the information he has the means of getting easily, the kind of life he will have to lead. The notion has no nameless, shapeless, unknowable terrors for him. He has seen plenty of Americans, and knows that they are like other men, and that but for the banish- ment from England, he will be happy enough. So, too, with the woman of education who accompanies her husband when he emigrates ; she has not that physical dread of an awful exist- ence with no relation to previous experiences of life which is so often to be witnessed among the women of the poor. With. the artisan, or at any rate with the labourer and his wife, it is just the reverse. They have not the means of obtaining
knowledge by which to compare the various lands that invite emigration. They are quite unable to acquaint themselves, or to grow familiar with the idea of the new social and material conditions that await them. Thus their ignorance of the Colonies allows the wildest notions of misery and dis- comfort to take possession of them,—notions that practically forbid them emigrating except in case of severe pecuniary pres- sure. They will seldom emigrate to better themselves; only do it, in fact, to prevent themselves falling lower. An Institute where these spectres can be laid will be of immense use in increasing timely emigration,—emigration of men who are not driven by despair. If the London artisan can see good photographs of the Australian and Canadian towns and settlements, and can notice around him the rich produce of the Colonies,—the sugar, the wool, the wood, the corn, the wine, the oil ; if he can learn that men live there as they live here, that there are public-houses and Sunday-schools, and that he will not be daily expected to encounter naked savages ; and if at the same time he can get intelligent advice and direction from competent instructors on the spot, he will soon find his fears and dismal forebodings of Colonial wretchedness die away.
But if the working men are really to make use of the In- stitute for this, or for the other purpose of political education, it will be utterly useless to place it in the West End. Working men will not and cannot travel for miles, at a con- siderable expense of money and comfort, to see a museum. If it is placed in a convenient situation, they will flock to it as eagerly as they do to Mr. Barnett's Easter exhibitions of pictures. If the Institute is to do the good work it ought to do, and can do, it must be placed, if not geographically, at least morally, at the East End of the town,—that is, it must be built in a poor quarter. Even in common fairness, the poor- have a right to the site of the next Museum. When the natural history collections were removed from the British Museum to South Kensington, a great opportunity was missed. There is no taste more common among the poor than the taste for natural history. Had the stuffed beasts and birds with which the people of the West End are so heartily, so naturally bored, been put up in Whitechapel, they would have been welcomed by streams of admirers. Such a mistake ought not to be made again. We should aim rather at the decentralisation of our national collections than at group- ing them together. Of course, the architects, the men of science, and the artists like to see ranges of imposing galleries, and consider the collections and the advantages of the site far more than they do the public that looks at them, or that pays for them. Even they, however, would relent if they realised how useful, how pleasure-giving, how
healthful a triumph might be secured by placing the great collections of art and science within the reach of the poor. ' Practically, they cannot go to the collections, and so the col- lections should go to them wherever possible or reasonable. But the rich can go into the East End to see exhibitions, and the more they are compelled to go there, the better. Let them, by going to see the new Institute, learn where the poor live in London, and let them realise the condition of life there, and discover how, though materially it is nothing like so awful as they fancy in their compassionate and sentimental moments, it is, as far as education, self-improvement, rational and healthful pleasure are concerned, far below any standard which we can be content with. The Prince of Wales is not slow to see the social bearings of a question, and has now considerable knowledge of the East End of London. We trust he may consider whether the object of making his Institute useful and pleasure- giving cannot be best obtained by such a plan. As for an actual site, are not the prison sites still vacant ? Could not one of these be given by the Government as a help to the scheme ?
Previous page
