Page "Alfred Charles Hobbs" Paragraph 2

The lock controversy continues a subject of great interest at the Crystal Palace, and, indeed, is now become of general importance.

We believed before the Exhibition opened that we had the best locks in the world, and among us Bramah and Chubb were reckoned quite as impregnable as Gibraltar — more so, indeed, for the key to the Mediterranean was taken by us, but none among us could penetrate into the locks and shoot the bolts of these masters.

The mechanical spirit, however, is never at rest, and if it is lulled into a false state of listlessness in one branch of industry, and in one part of the world, elsewhere it springs up suddenly to admonish and reproach us with our supineness.

Our descendents on the other side of the water are every now and then administering to the mother country a wholesome filial lesson upon this very text, and recently they have been " rubbing us up " with a severity which perhaps we merited for sneering at their shortcomings in the Exhibition.