The Committee's Coup d'état.

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power upon it, made necessary by the peculiar secrecy observed by the Society concerning its proceedings, out of delicacy towards the feelings of "genius and learning in distress." The council was accordingly elected; but so loosely were affairs managed after Williams' death, that it never met separately, but mingled in the meetings of the committee. No efficient control was, therefore, ever exercised by the council; but some of its members appear to have been occasionally troublesome to the general desire in the committee for complete repose. Cases of gross mismanagement were alleged, and reform urgently demanded. In 1847, however, the committee appear to have resolved upon a coup d'état. After thirty years, they suddenly discovered that the attendance of the council at their meetings was illegal. Counsel, upon a case drawn up by the committee, supported their views. The council were accordingly expelled, and not only were they declared incapable of attending those meetings, but absolutely destitute of the power of calling themselves together, or of being called together, or of meeting anywhere. There is still a council, but it has no place of meeting, no right to meet, no duties to perform, no power to act in any way, or to inform itself in any way of the committee's proceedings. The committee has positively refused to permit members of the council to inspect accounts or papers at the Society's house.

One word as to the principle of "delicacy and secrecy," so emphatically insisted upon by the committee. Delicacy is no doubt, in itself, a good thing. No one would willingly hurt the pride of learning or genius "brought to unworthy wretchedness." But there are many good things which, in their most perfect forms at least, are unattainable under the ordinary circumstances of life. Trust and confidence are good things. It is a painful ceremony to appoint auditors over trustees of the highest honour, because, as we have said, it necessarily implies a possibility, be it ever so remote, of roguery. We would rather, much rather, assume the perfect honesty, and suppress the disagreeable condition; but we cannot. So an institution, which required perfect secrecy, and therefore irresponsibility in any man or body of men united by one esprit de corps, is a thing which, however desirable, cannot be attained while men are men. The kind-hearted Williams did indeed suppress names in his printed narratives of cases relieved, and enjoin "delicacy;" but one of the principles laid down by him was, that the "records" of the Society," the best appeals to justice and humanity, may be daily inspected." As it is, for the amounts expended, the number of cases relieved, and the judgment and care which ought to be exercised in its proceedings, no human being-not even the council of " elders"-has any authority

save the committee's own word. Indeed, so enamoured of their idea of secrecy are the committee, that although at their annual meetings nothing but bare figures is ever divulged, it was only after years of agitation by the Reformers, and only lately, that they would permit the presence of newspaper reporters. It is argued by the committee's defenders, that no case of breach of trust has been shown by their opponents to have occurred since the suspension of the council and the establishment of perfect secrecy. But how could any such thing be shown? Neither the council nor any other persons have any knowledge of the committee's proceedings for the last eleven years. They can only point to what took place before that time, to cases of mismanagement, which are admitted, and refer to the general principles that have been established by moral philosophers with regard to corporate bodies. Notwithstanding the existence of the council, loosely constituted as it was, instances are stated to have occurred in which the Society actually relieved two widows of one man; and relieved "ladies" who were afterwards sent to the prison as begging-letter impostors; and the following statement of the Reformers is admitted by the committee to be correct :—

"At a time when the committee were doling out relief in such single donations as five, ten, and twenty-in no instance (it is believed) exceeding forty-pounds, they voted one hundred pounds. each to the widows of two of their own members; and, as one of the deceased was a man of fortune, who bequeathed two legacies of a hundred guineas each to friends, and as no application for relief had been made by his widow, it is fair to assume, that but for troublesome inquiry and comment, such self-apportionments of the funds would have become by no means uncommon."

So strong was the "suspicion that persons were sometimes relieved as authors of works which were never heard of out of the rooms of the Society," that one of the "troublesome" members brought forward and carried a regulation, that no case recommended by a member of the committee should "be entertained" "unless the same shall be accompanied by the testimonials of two or more respectable persons authenticating the facts therein stated," a law which is in existence to this hour. It is not, of course, meant to be insinuated that any like wrong-doings now take place; but the fact that such things have been is a sufficient condemnation of the state of absolute secrecy and irresponsibility which the committee have attained.

The new construction put upon the charter necessarily involved the committee in a dilemma. If the attendance of the council, and the voting of the council at their meetings were illegal, all the acts of the committee, for thirty years past, must also be illegal and void; nay, the very committee itself could

have no lawful being, for they had been elected by the council at such meetings. This was the decided opinion of counsel, who held upon a case submitted, that after the abrogation of the byelaw "the committee was not legally constituted." This difficulty, however, was surmounted after the fashion of irresponsible committees. Obviously nothing could legally extricate them from this confusion save a new charter, but the committee continued to act. They decided, in fact, that everything hitherto had been illegal, except their own election-every power gone, except their own power.

After continued efforts to bring the committee to a sense of the impropriety of their position, the Reformers at length succeeded in getting the appointment of a committee to consider the question of a new charter. The committee consisted of Mr Robert Bell, Sir J. Forbes, Mr Dickens, Mr Dilke, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, and others, who unanimously recommended a number of changes to be embodied in a new charter if necessary. These comprised the re-establishment of the council, the granting of annuities and loans, and the attempt to extend the Society's uses to "something beyond a mere eleemosynary association with literature." David Williams, the founder, had indeed always contemplated this extended character. In his letter to the Prince of Wales, an interesting document, which the committee have, for obvious reasons, lately struck out of the short history of the Society prefixed to every annual report, he unfolds his scheme in detail. He designed to make his home not a number of rooms with dingy windows occupied by a committee only nine times in the year, but "a college for decayed and superannuated genius." The Society, he said

"Might not only deposit its own papers, but those of authors and collectors who possess any valuable records respecting literature. Books are frequently sent by claimants on the Society; and authors and booksellers might be induced to furnish the new productions of the press. A library might, therefore, be annexed at a trifling expense; and admission to it as to a common room, to every member of the Society, by a small subscription, would not only assist the general income, but attract the subscribers to a common centre of communication and action, and produce numerous and important effects. There are other means by which the utility of the Society might be extended."

The Society, as we have shown, had but a struggling life in Williams' days, and had not obtained its formal charter of incorporation when he died; but his known intentions were so far remembered and respected, that the establishment of "a hall or college" is one of the objects for which the committee are em

powered in the charter itself. Williams, however, it should be borne in mind, never proposed taking a house out of the sums subscribed and bequeathed for the "relief of learning and genius.” The Fund, he said, would be better for a house, but it must be obtained, if at all, "without expense." He asked the "Prince of Wales" to "bestow on it a place of abode;" but, until he obtained it, he held his meetings as the Artists' General Benevolent Fund and other societies now do, in a room hired for the occasion. The Reformers, however, did not venture to recommend the giving up of the house which the committee had so resolutely defended, but merely suggested that it should be made at no additional expense useful to literature and learning in some way. They proposed, in fact, to carry out the details of Williams' plan, and recommended the committee so to do; but the tide of reform suddenly turned, and the committee at the next meeting refused to adopt the suggestions. The sudden change in the committee's determination evidently received a strong support from their more aristocratic members, who seem to have taken offence at the Reformers' recommendation to remove them in favour of persons more closely connected with literature. The Reformers, however, appear only to have objected to Lords who were not men of letters, their proposed house list comprising Earl Stanhope, the Earl of Ellesmere, Lord John Russell, Lord Carlisle, the Marquis of Normanby, and others. We are decidedly of opinion that every member of the committee should be a man of letters. "Common charities," as Franklin remarked upon the first proposal of the Society, "spring from common feelings." A committee composed of literary men will best judge of the troubles of their brethren; and what is of still more importance, will probably have the best knowledge, or the means of obtaining the best knowledge of the claimants themselves. Such a committee would hardly think of pleading, as this present committee have done, that the men of "learning and genius" whom they relieved were so little known to them that a large portion of the Society's annual revenue was consumed in merely inquiring into and verifying claims.

We have treated this subject at greater length than the interests directly involved would perhaps warrant, because it appears to us to yield an instructive chapter on benevolent committees. We agree with Mr Dickens and his party in thinking that it forms "a remarkable instance of the condition into which good-enough men will often lapse when they get behind a large table." We cannot, however, believe that improvement can be much longer resisted.

ART. XI.-Politics, and Political Economy of Weak Governments. By F. C. London, 1858.

DURING the session of 1858, we have witnessed the fall of a Liberal Government, strong both in public opinion and in individual ability, and the accession in its place of a nominally Conservative Government, comparatively weak in either of these characteristics, and born under an ill-starred numerical minority. We have seen this Conservative Government acknowledging no political opinions, repudiating the traditions of the party which they led, apostatising from the first principles which they themselves professed, introducing in the place of those principles an elastic latitudinarianism suitable to every exigency of the hour, expiating blunders by means of scape-goats, submitting in humility to measures carried over their own heads, and against the will of their legitimate supporters, and originating not one single measure of their own (for Indian Reform, in all but its details, was essentially Lord Palmerston's). Yet we have seen this Government, in spite of all this abandonment of consistency, of self-respect, and of political belief, apparently not more insecure than when they assumed office, and so balancing parties in the House of Commons as to float safely into the haven of a prorogation. What is the solution of this problem?

It is said that political parties are rapidly dissolving, and that our view of the duration of a ministry must henceforth be based on different calculations from those which have hitherto prevailed. But we see no sufficient ground for this assumption. We do not think that either the facts, or the altered tactics which we have lately witnessed, necessarily imply a disruption of party government. Party government in some shape is, in our view, the indestructible and inalienable tendency of our parliamentary system-a tendency kept alive partly by an innate spirit of partisanship, and partly by a perpetual liability to a succession of great controversies. But in order to vitalise and render efficient the action of party in a legislative assembly, there must be not simply traditions of parliamentary difference, but real conflicts of popular interest. These conflicts are exactly what are now wanting; and it is precisely because they are lulled, that parties have, for the moment, lost their organisation. Unless two cardinal classes of interests are brought into action against each other, the whole system must lose its tension.

But it does not follow that, because opposite interests are not at this moment in active hostility, they have permanently ceased to actuate the House of Commons. If such active conflicts of interest were finally defunct, they could be so only as a

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