Queen Victoria by E. Gordon Browne

Author:E. Gordon Browne
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Queens -- Great Britain -- Biography, Great Britain -- History -- Victoria, 1837-1901, Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819-1901
Published: 2005-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER X: The Great Exhibition

The idea of a "great exhibition of the Works and Industries of all Nations" was Prince Albert's. The scheme when first proposed in 1849 was coldly received in this country. It was intended, to use the Prince's own words, "To give us a true test and a living picture of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived in this great task, and a new starting-point from which all nations will be able to direct their further exertions."

The Times led the attack against the proposed site in Hyde Park, and the public was uneasy at the thought of large numbers of foreigners congregating in London, and at the expected importation of foreign goods.

As showing the absurd things which 'John Bull' could say at this time in his jealousy and dislike of foreigners the Prince wrote: "The strangers, they give out, are certain to commence a thorough revolution here, to murder Victoria and myself, and to proclaim the Red Republic in England; the Plague is certain to ensue from the confluence of such vast multitudes, and to swallow up those whom the increased price of everything has not already swept away. For all this I am to be responsible, and against all this I have to make efficient provision."

Punch pictured the young Prince begging, cap in hand, for subscriptions:

Pity the sorrows of a poor, young Prince

Whose costly schemes have borne him to your door;

Who's in a fix, the matter not to mince,

Oh! help him out, and Commerce swell your store!

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