tions
repeatedly. The final meeting of the Royal Commission was held at
Marlborough House on April 30th, 1897 and the Prince of Wales submitted
an elaborate and exhaustive Report which was afterwards published. In
his own remarks the President pointed out that the project had served
its main purpose in very largely promoting knowledge of the Empire's
resources and products and that, incidentally, its success had given the
management a surplus of L35,000. This sum, he suggested, should be
largely devoted to the advancement of the project for a permanent
Exhibition or Imperial Institute--"in the promotion of which the Queen
and I both take so warm an interest." Later in the evening the Prince
expressed the hope that as the late Exhibition had been, allegorically,
burnt that day, "the Imperial Institute may be a Phoenix rising out of
its ashes. I trust that it may be a lasting memorial not only of that
but of the Jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen." Of the sum mentioned,
L25,000 was accordingly voted to the new project.

The proposal of the Heir Apparent--as first expressed in a letter to
the Lord Mayor on September 13, 1886--was that the idea evolved in the
Exhibition should be made permanent and be embodied in an Imperial
Institute which should be at once a visible emblem of the unity of the
Empire, a place for illustrating its vast resources, a museum for
exhibiting its varied and changing products and industries, a centre of
information and communication for all British countries, an aid to the
increase and distribution of national wealth, a medium for combining in
joint co-operation older and smaller institutions of tried utility, and
a fitting national memorial of the Queen's Jubilee. The movement
developed steadily and, on January 12th, 1887, a gathering was held at
Kensington Palace, upon invitation of the Prince of Wales, and was one
of the most representative over which even he had ever presided. Amongst
those present were Lord Herschell, Chairman of the Organizing Committee,
the Earl of Carnarvon, Lord Revelstoke, Lord Rothschild, Sir Lyon
Playfair, Sir H. T. Holland, Sir John Rose, Sir Henry James, the Right
Hon. H. H. Fowler, Sir Frederick Leighton, Sir Charles Tupper, Sir Saul
Samuel, Sir Edward Guinness, Sir Ashley Eden, Sir Owen T. Bourne, Sir
Reginald Hanson, Lord Mayor of London, Mr. J. H. Tritton, Chairman of
the London Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Pattison Currie, Chairman of the
Bank of England, Sir Frederic