360 SIB JOSEPH BANKS. 



November, 1783, recommending that the Foreign Secre- 

 tary should reside in London, and Dr. Button tendered 

 his resignation. The emoluments of the office were 

 only twenty pounds a-year, from a bequest of Mr. Keck 

 half a century before ; and Dr. Hutton having to hire 

 chambers in town for the performance of his official 

 duties, had been in reality a loser by holding the place. 



This resolution of the Council, and resignation of 

 the Foreign Secretary, immediately caused a great sen- 

 sation in the society. It appears that the embers of 

 discontent with the President's administration had been 

 for some time smouldering ; and now the spark acci- 

 dentally flung, made them break out in a flame. Dr. 

 Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal, really considered 

 his friend Dr. Hutton as ill-treated ; so might Baron 

 Maseres, and one or two others ; but the most active 

 mover, who indeed took the lead in the opposition to 

 the Council, was Dr. Horsley, a priest of intolerant 

 nature, of extreme arrogance, of violent temper, and 

 guided by a most inflated estimate of his own im- 

 portance as a cultivator of mathematical science, in 

 which capacity he was nearly if not altogether insigni- 

 ficant. Finding himself joined with Dr. Maskelyne 

 and Baron Maseres, he chose to hoist a standard for 

 the mathematical sciences in opposition to natural his- 

 tory, which the President and his especial friends 

 chiefly cultivated ; and he considered the treatment of 

 Dr. Hutton as an overt act of hostility to those studies 

 to which he untruly represented that his own life was 

 devoted. 



The motion was carried, by a majority of thirty to 

 twenty-five, that Dr. Hutton be thanked for his services 

 as Foreign Secretary ; and Sir Joseph Banks's party 

 committed their first error in opposing this proposition, 

 on a ground, plausible, but wholly insufficient, that the 

 Council alone, and not the Society at large, had the 

 means of judging how far the duties of Dr. Hutton's 

 office had been well performed. The New Council 



