[Amongst the names of the persons composing this Committee, which was proposed by Mr.South, were those of Dr.Wollaston and Mr.Herschel.] The Council received their report at the close of the session; and in recording it on the journals, they made an appeal to the Council for the ensuing year to bestow on it "THEIR EARLIEST AND MOST SERIOUS ATTENTION." Now when the party, to whose government some of these improvements would have been a death-warrant, found that the subject was likely to be taken up in the Council, they were in dismay: but the learned and grateful peer came to their assistance, and aided Mr.Davies Gilbert in getting rid of these improvements completely.
It has been the fashion to maintain that all classes of the Royal Society should be represented in the Council, and consequently that a peer or two should find a place amongst them.

Those who are most adverse to this doctrine would perhaps be the most anxious to render this tribute to any one really employing his time, his talents, or his rank in advancing the cause of science.

But when a nobleman, unversed in our pursuits, will condescend to use the influence of his station in aiding a President to stifle, WITHOUT DISCUSSION, propositions recommended for consideration by some of the most highly gifted members of the Society,--those who doubt the propriety of the principle may reasonably be pardoned for the disgust they must necessarily entertain for the practical abuse to which it leads.
Of the other three Commissioners, who received each a hundred a-year, although the nomination was, in point of form, in the Admiralty, yet it was well known that the President of the Royal Society did, in fact, always name them.

Of these I will only mention one fact.

The late Sir Joseph Banks assigned to me as a reason why I need not expect to be appointed, (as he had held out to me at a former period when I had spoken to him on the subject) that I had taken a prominent part in the formation of the ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY.