danger of any expression of temper interrupting or injuring the arguments employed.
There were other points suggested, but I shall subjoin the Report of the Committee:—
Report of the Committee appointed to consider the best means of limiting the Members admitted into the Royal Society, as well as to make such Suggestions on that subject as may seem to them conducive to the welfare of the Society.
Your Committee having maturely considered the resolution of the Council under which they have been appointed; and having satisfied themselves that the progressive increase of the Society has been in a much higher ratio than the progressive increase of population, or the general growth of knowledge, or the extension of those sciences which it has been the great object of the Society to promote, they have agreed to the following Report:—
Your Committee assume as indisputable propositions, that the utility of the Society is in direct proportion to its respectability. That its respectability can only be secured by its comprising men of high philosophical eminence; and that the obvious means of associating persons of this eminence will be the public conviction, that to belong to the Society is an honour. Your Committee, therefore, think themselves fully borne out in the conclusion, that it would be expedient to limit the Society to such a number as should be a fair representation of the talent of the country; the consequence of which will be, that every vacancy would become an