eir award, to those to whom that trust was confided?

Did no one member of the Council venture, with the most submissive
deference, to suggest to the President, that the public eye would watch
with interest this first decision on the Royal medals, and that it
might perhaps be more discreet to adjudge them, for the first time, in
accordance with the laws which had been made for their distribution? Or
was public opinion then held in supreme contempt? Was it scouted, as I
have myself heard it scouted, in the councils of the Royal Society?

Or was the President exempt, on this occasion, from the responsibility
of dictating an award in direct violation of the faith which had been
pledged to the Society and to the public? and, did the Council, intent
on exercising a power so rarely committed to them; and, perhaps,
urged by the near approach of their hour of dinner, dispense with the
formality of reading the laws on which they were about to act?

Whatever may have been the cause, the result was most calamitous to the
Society. Its decision was attacked on other grounds; for, with a strange
neglect, the Council had taken no pains to make known, either to the
Society, or to the public, the rules they had made for the adjudication
of these medals.

The evils resulting from this decision were many. In the first place, it
was most indecorous and ungrateful to treat with such neglect the rules
which had been approved by our Royal Patron. In the next place, the
medals themselves became almost worthless from this original taint: and
they ceased to excite "competition amongst men of science," because no
man could feel the least security that he should get them, even though
his discoveries should fulfil all the conditions on which they were
offered,

The great injury which accrued to science from this proceeding, induced
me, in the succeeding session, when I found myself on the Council of
the Royal Society, to endeavour to remove the stigma which rested on
our character. Whether I took the best means to remedy the evil is now
a matter of comparatively little consequence: had I found any serious
disposition to set it right, I should readily have aided in any plans
for doing that which I felt myself bound to attempt, even though I
should stand alone, as I had the misfortune of doing on that occasion.
[It is but justice to Mr. South, who was a member of that Council, to
state, that the circumstance of his having had the Copley medal of