4i6 Report S.A.A. Advancement of Science. 



though the wine tax was diverled lo ihe general funds of the Colony 

 in 1825, and a pittance of ^300 per annum paid out of it for a 

 couple of years, until in 1827 the tax was repealed, and the library 

 handed over to a Committee, thus ceasing in effect to be a Public 

 Library under State control. .Vol till 1862 did the Government of 

 the Cape again contribute toward ihe upkeep of the Library, but 

 in that year the sum of ^600 was granted toward its maintenance, 

 and grants have been made ever since. 



By private benefacti(;ns it is true that there were older English 

 Public Libraries — that of London, for instance, being founded in the 

 fifteenth centun,', but this had disappeared entirely by the seven- 

 teenth. The Library) of New York in America, too, had been 

 founded in the last )ear of the seventeenth centur}', but it may be 

 said to have remained utterly neglected, till in 1754 the efforts of 

 Benjamin Franklin (commenced in 1731) founded the Library Society 

 of Philadelphia, to be, as he says in his " Autobiography," " The 

 mother of all the North American Subscription Libraries now so 

 numerous. These libraries have improved the general conversation 

 of Americans, have made the common tradesmen and farmers as 

 intelligent as most gentlemen in other countries," and, we may add, 

 have continued to prosper to the present day, receiving large bene- 

 factions by gift and by bequest, and frequently being largelv sub- 

 sidised bv public funds. 



In 1761, within seven years (jf i'"ranklin"s foundation of the Phila- 

 delphia Institution, Cape Town and London both received donations 

 of books, which, curiously enough, were both handed over to churches 

 until the community should claim them for a Public Librarv. It is 

 interesting to note that Cape Town had claimed its Dessinian books 

 from the hands of the Consistory of the Dutch Reformed Church, and 

 had housed them in its Public Library in the first quarter of the nine- 

 teenth century, but it was almost at the end of the last quarter of 

 that century that Shoreditch claimed from the Churchwardens of 

 St. Leonard its heritage of the Dawson books. Cape Town had her 

 Library six }ears before the Corporation of London took steps to 

 refound her Guildhall Library, and nearly half a century before the 

 sister city of Westminster permitted the Trustees of the Tenison 

 Tnist to sell by public auction the books that Archbishop had willed 

 to his foundation at St. Martin's. 



In England there were Subscription Lil)raries in the eighteenth 

 century, which, if we may believe the evidence of Sheridan, circulated 

 little but fiction, but they do not appear to have flourished. Some 

 of them have been able to continue to modern days without absorption 

 into more useful institutions, but the majority have disappeared. The 

 same is true of Scotland and of Ireland, and few of the older 

 libraries there have developed on the lines that similar institutions 

 have done in America. Birmingham affords, however, a most success- 

 ful instance of the growth of a Subscription Library, and its develop- 

 ment alongside and within near reach of one of the most successful 

 of the Free Town Libraries established under the Ewart Acts. 



