Reflections on the Decline of Science in England

Of the necessity that members of the royal society should express their opinions.

One of the causes which has contributed to the success of the party, is to be found in the great reluctance with which many of those whose names added lustre to the Society expressed their opinions, and the little firmness with which they maintained their objections.  How many times have those whose activity was additionally stimulated by their interest, proposed measures which a few words might have checked; whilst the names of those whose culpable silence thus permitted the project to be matured, were immediately afterwards cited by their grateful coadjutors, as having sanctioned that which in their hearts they knew to be a job.

Even in the few cases which have passed the limits of such forbearance, when the subject has been debated in the Council, more than one, more than two instances are known, where subsequent circumstances have occurred, which proved, with the most irresistible moral evidence, that members have spoken on one side of the question, and have voted on the contrary.

This reluctance to oppose that which is disapproved, has been too extensively and too fatally prevalent for the interests of the Royal Society.  It may partly be attributed to that reserved and retiring disposition, which frequently marks the man of real knowledge, as strongly as an officious interference and flippant manner do the charlatan, or the trader in science.  Some portion of it is due to that improper deference which was long paid to every dictum of the President, and much of it to that natural indisposition to take trouble on any point in which a man’s own interest is not immediately concerned.  It is to be hoped, for the credit of that learned body, that no anticipation of the next feast of St. Andrew ever influenced the taciturnity of their disposition. [It may be necessary to inform those who are not members of the Royal Society, that this is the day on which those Fellows who choose, meet at Somerset House, to register the names of the Council and Officers the President has been pleased to appoint for the ensuing year; and who afterwards dine together, for the purpose of praising each other over wine, which, until within these few years, was paid for out of the funds of the Society.  This abuse was attacked by an enterprising reformer, and of course defended by the coterie.  It was, however, given up as too bad.  The public may form some idea of the feeling which prevails in the Council, when they are informed that this practice was defended by one of the officers of the Society, on the ground that, if abolished, the assistant secretary would lose his PERCENTAGE on the TAVERN bills.]