[Charles Dickens and Richard Horne], ‘The Great Exhibition and the Little One’, Household Words (1851)

There may be – for a free will, and a perverse one, too, appear to be allowed by Providence to nations as well as individuals – there may be an odd, barbarous, or eccentric nation and there, upon the face of the globe, who may see fit to exercise its free will, in the negative form of will-not, and who may seclude itself from the rest of the world, resolved not to move on with it. There are some stupendous anchors lying in the outer part of the Great Exhibition. One of the indications of the progress of a nation is “interchange,” including internal communication and trade, and external communication and commerce, currency, and wages. It is worth while to compare the work-people in the Machinery Courts of the Great Exhibition, with the models of the Chinese workpeople at their various trades.