been thus situated, that although they have in truth had no part in the decision, yet the Society and the public will justly attribute a portion of the merit or demerit of their 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
