LORD DERBY ON THE ADVANCE OF CIVILISATION.

Evening Star, Issue 3499, 11 May 1874, Page 3

LORD DERBY ON THE ADVANCE OF CIVILISATION.

At' the annual dinner of the Civil Fngineers on Saturday, Lord Derby referred to the loudly-expressed apprehensions of man y good people lest the nation should be utterly ruined and undone by the height of luxury and extravagance which it had reached, when the imports pf 1770 exceeded ■ten millions sterling. They are now nearly three hundred million sterling, (Cheers.) It is a bare matter of fact to say that in national civilisation the advance of the last hundred years has been treater than in all the centuries put together which followed the time of the old Homan civilisation. (Cheers.) The pyramids of the Pharaohs and the vast gigantic constructions of Rome involved a very small expenditure of labor and skill compared with'your 15,000 miles of railway works, or with those artifical works which for mile after mile line the banks of the 'I hames and the Mer/ey. (Hear, hear) Thei Roman roads have be§ii surpassed, audit pot be long before the are outdone by the works for the water supply of our great fqwps pn a gcaje which no ope has ever conceived. (Applause ) telegraph. Can doubt be that the sudden bringing, as it were, face to face of all the nations of the earth by that instantaneous communication which now exists is a change which will profoundly affect the whole future of civilisation in many ways which we do not now forsee 1