Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/691

Rh revolution of the financial condition of the association. In 1850 the debts of the Society amounted to £2,402, an amount that was reduced in 1851 to £1,696, since when the Society has become not only solvent, but possessed of a large accumulation of capital, which—in the opinion of many of the members, now amounting to over 3,000—it is somewhat chary in dispensing. This great storm, which completely altered the condition of the Society of Arts, and culminated in the Great Exhibition of 1851, can thus be distinctly traced to Mr. Felix Summerly's "teacup."

The merit of initiating the idea of an international exhibition has been often warmly contested, but there is no longer any doubt that the original proposition was made to the committee of the Society of Arts in 1844, by Sir William Fothergill Cooke. There is no question that the idea of this gentleman was clearly that of an international exhibition, at that time declined by the committee of the Society of Arts, but at a later period adopted by that body with the sanction and coöperation of the late prince consort.

In the month of June, 1849, the secretary, Mr. J. Scott Russell, stated at the annual meeting, in the presence of the late prince consort, that, owing to the yearly increasing success of the Society's exhibition, the council had no doubt of their being able to carry out the plan originally proposed for holding a great national exhibition of the products of British industry in 1851. This statement led to frequent communications between his royal highness the president and various members, with the ultimate result of expanding the plan to international dimensions. The prince consort, as president of the Society, brought the scheme officially under the notice of the Government; but in the mean while the Society of Arts was not idle, and had already entered into a contract for building a convenient edifice, when a royal commission was issued. Mr. Scott Russell and Mr. (now Sir) Stafford Northcote were appointed secretaries. An executive committee was formed, consisting of "Henry Cole, Charles Wentworth Dilke the younger, George Drew, Francis Fuller, and Robert Stephenson, with Matthew Digby Watt as secretary." Meanwhile the Society of Arts had organized the financial arrangements necessary for carrying out the scheme, but the immediate connection of the Society with the exhibition now came to an end; the child had outgrown its nurse, and required nothing short of a royal commission to manage it. How well the Exhibition of 1851 was managed, and how, after the final adjustment of accounts, a surplus of £186,438 18s. 6d. remained in hand, are now matters of history, as well as the expenditure of that sum as part of the money devoted to the purchase and development of the Gore House estate.

Since the launching of the Great Exhibition, the Society of Arts has done much good work in promoting industrial art and encouraging inventive genius. It is true that much of its work has been taken out