364 SIR JOSEPH BANKS. 



bates chiefly carried 011 by men who did not usually 

 attend, there can be no doubt that the Society was 

 greatly benefitted by their interference. The asperity 

 which had marked the progress of the contest was testi- 

 fied in the speeches of the opposition leader, Dr. Horsley. 

 He had, moreover, given a great and threatening notice 

 of so many motions as might occupy the Society 

 for the whole session, and until the annual period 

 came round for electing the officers, when he plainly 

 hinted his hope that another President would be 

 chosen. The haughtiness of this arrogant ecclesiastic's 

 tone in the debates gave general offence, even to those 

 who might be disposed to admit the cleverness of his 

 speeches. When, perceiving a defeat approaching, 

 he threatened a secession of the mathematical party, 

 he exclaimed, " The President will then be left with 

 his train of feeble amateurs and that toy* upon the 

 table ; the ghost of the Society in which Philosophy 

 once reigned, and Newton presided as her minister." 



To have saved the Society from such a consumma- 

 tion as being under Dr. Horsley's presidency was truly 

 a service of the highest value, which, in a somewhat 

 unusual though certainly not an irregular manner, was 

 rendered by the members who attended and resisted 

 the factious combination. His assuming the station of 

 leader among the mathematicians was altogether pre- 

 posterous ; and he might have been raised to the chair, 

 by dint of the intrigue which he set on foot, and the 

 ferment which he excited in the bosom of the Society, 

 without any victory whatever being gained for mathe- 

 matical and physical science. His writings had never 

 placed him higher than a mere " amateur," and a some- 

 what "feeble amateur" in all essentials, though stout 

 enough in the overbearing language of his polemical 

 writings, and magniloquent enough in the diction of his 

 self-laudatory prefaces. Some of his efforts are merely 



* The mace, to which he pointed. 



