first class; and a more minute investigation into the value of each paper would naturally take place before it was admitted into the Transactions. Or it might be established that such papers only should be allowed to count, as the Committee, who reported them as fit to be printed, should also certify. The great objection made to such an arrangement was, that it would be displeasing to the rest of the Society, and that they had a vested right (having entered the Society when no distinction was made in the lists) to have them always continued without one.
Without replying to this shadow of an argument of vested rights, I will only remark that he who maintains this view pays a very ill compliment to the remaining 600 members of the Royal Society; since he does, in truth, maintain that those gentlemen who, from their position, accidentally derive reputation which does not belong to them, are unwilling, when the circumstance is pointed out, to allow the world to assign it to those who have fairly won it; or else that they are incapable of producing any thing worthy of being printed in the Transactions of the Royal Society. Lightly as the conduct of the Society, as a body, has compelled me to think of it, I do not think so ill of the personal character of its members as
