THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 409 



members examined twenty -five years later to see whether 

 its poles had changed in position. 1 



u He has frequently committed many things to their 

 search," says the future Bishop, beginning a succession of 

 sentences which insist upon irrelevantly recalling the 

 arraignment of George III. in the immortal Declara- 

 tion "he has referred many foreign rarities to their in- 

 spection: he has recommended many domestick improve- 

 ments to their care: he has demanded the result of their 

 trials in many appearances of Nature: he has been present 

 and assisted with his own hands at the performing of 

 many of their Experiments, in his Gardens, his Parks 

 and on the River . . he has sometimes reproved them for 

 the slowness of their proceedings." 



Nor did he fail to recognize the democracy of science 

 for when the young Society demurred at admitting into its 

 fold John Graunt, citizen of London, the judicious author 

 of the Observations on the Bills of Mortality (the first 

 great work on its subject) because he was a tradesman, it 

 was speedily brought to its senses by a sharp message of 

 disapproval from his Majesty and a curt order "that if 

 they found any more such tradesmen, they should be sure 

 to admit them all without any more ado." 



The importance of the part which the Royal Society 

 >layed in the development of the new philosophy, and later 

 in that of the new science of electricity, can not be over- 

 ited. Indeed, it may be said that at the very beginning of 

 its career, the sturdy blows which it dealt to witchcraft, sor- 

 >ry and demonology, by shattering popular belief in these 

 [elusions, did much to emancipate electrical knowledge 

 roin the errors with which it was encumbered. But the 

 example, the stimulus, the encouragement, the immediate 

 lelp, without which its efforts might well have proved 

 fruitless, it owes in no small measure to the king himself, 

 'herefore in estimating the conditions of the philosophical 



renaissance now under review, it is necessary to remember 







1 Phil. Trans., No. 388, p. 344, 1687. 



