For the best fruits of the exposition its projectors and all concerned in its success looked abroad. In this estimate of highest results they had the example of Europe. It was remembered that British exports rose from one hundred and thirty-one millions sterling in 1850 to two hundred and fourteen in 1853--an increase equal to our average annual export at present, and double what it was at that time. The declared satisfaction of Austria with her apparent net loss of seven millions of dollars by the exhibition of 1873, in view of the offset she claimed in the stimulus it gave to her domestic industry and the extended market it earned for her foreign trade, was also eloquent. We must therefore address the world in the way most likely to ensure its attention and attendance. The chief essential to that end was that it should be official. Government must address government. [Illustration: MACHINERY HALL.] Naturally, this necessity was apparent from the beginning. Congress was addressed betimes, and the consequence was a sufficiently sonorous act of date March 3, 1871, assuming in the title to "provide for celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of American independence." It made, however, no provision at all for that purpose financially. On the contrary, it provided very stringently that the Federal treasury should not be a cent the worse for anything contained in the bill. It furnished, however, the stamp wanted. It "created" the United States Centennial Commission, and it directed the President, as soon as the private corporators should have perfected their work, to address foreign nations, through their diplomatic representatives and our own, in its behalf. A commissioner and alternate were appointed by the President, on the nomination of the respective governors, from each State and Territory, who should have "exclusive control" of the exhibition. Subsequently, an act of June 1, 1872, established a Centennial Board of Finance, as a body corporate, to manage the fisc of the exhibition, provide ways and means for the construction of the buildings according to the plans adopted by the commission, and after the close of the exhibition to convert its property into cash and divide the same, after paying debts, _pro rata_ among the stockholders. This was to be done under the supervision of the commission, which was to wind up the board, audit its accounts, and make report to the President of the financial outcome of the affair. An inroad on the terms of this act is made by the law of last winter, which makes preferred stock of the million and a half then subscribed by the Federal government--a provision, however, the literal enforcement of which, by the covering back of so much money into the treasury of the United States, is, in our opinion, not probable. It will doubtless be made a permanent appropriation, in some form, for the promotion of the arts of industry and taste.