6 



change annually, though on submitting the proposition 

 to the vote at a general meeting it was not passed into 

 a law. The experience of those best versed in the 

 history of the Society shewed them that so far from any 

 wish existing to give a preference to papers written by 

 members of the Council, the real state of things has 

 been exactly the reverse ; it is not that Officers and 

 other members of Council write essays because they 

 are such, but those who evince their zeal for the 

 interests of the Society by the production of Papers 

 are generally the persons elected to a share in its 

 management. 



The want of similar zeal in a greater number of 

 the members has been the true and the only reason 

 why the offices in the Society have not undergone 

 more frequent change. 



Of the loss of active members, by change of resi- 

 dence, the Society has experienced an instance in the 

 removal to London of Robert Hall, Esq., one of its 

 Secretaries ; he has been elected an honorary member, 

 and many of the members being desirous further to 

 mark their sense of the value of Mr. Hall's services, 

 it was suggested to invite him to a public dinner on 

 his leaving Leeds. The cordiality with which this 

 suggestion was received and carried into effect, and the 

 character of the attendance on the occasion, fully proved 

 that the advantage of such societies as these, in soft- 

 ening the asperities of party, is no vain boast, or figure 

 of rhetoric, but a really efficient principle. 



On the failure of the negociations (described in a 

 former report,) for effecting a junction between this 

 Society and the Literary Institution, it was concluded 



