ABSTRACT
T H O U G H hardly a Christian Socialist, Prince Albert was almost as eager as Kingsley himself to quicken the moral conscience of an industrial England. While he could have no recourse to direct attack upon the abuses of capital, he could at least rebuke the insularity of British manufacturers who remained suspicious of his alien tastes. Accordingly, guided by the vision of a universal brotherhood to be grounded upon civilized technology and peaceful commerce, he informed all plans for the Great Exhibition of 1851 with his own "religious" impulse; and ultimately on the memorable opening day he presided over this first world's fair with true Christian humility amid all the pageantry of pomp and circumstance. I f few of the exhibitors he attracted to London shared the purity of his motives, none entirely escaped the sense of interdependence which Albert sought earnestly to engender. Even the official catalogue bore some impress of his moral purpose; its very title page announced — in Latin and
in English — a divine sanction for the miracles of the nineteenth century's inventive genius:
Say not the discoveries we ma\e are our own — The germs of every art are implanted within us, And God our instructor, out of that which is concealed, Develops the faculties of invention.
