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Institution worthy of the country, for which a bounteous Providence has done 

 so much to stimulate the well-directed energies of man. 



It is therefore, Sir, with a grateful sense of the favourable progress of 

 their exertions -that they now invite your Excellency to dedicate this additional 

 Chamber to the public use. No more auspicious occasion can be selected for 

 this ceremony than the day on which the subjects of Her Most Gracious 

 Majesty in this remote quarter of her dominions, with affectionate loyalty 

 towards her Crown and Person, celebrate the Anniversary of Her Birth, and 

 testify to your Excellency their feelings of respect to You as Her Representative, 

 and of their veneration for, and attachment to, British institutions firmly planted 

 in this soil. 



They may, moreover, be allowed to add that no place can be chosen more 

 likely to arouse and exalt such feelings than this apartment reared in honor 

 of literature ; which contains the records of the glorious deeds of Her Majesty's 

 illustrious ancestors, and of the achievements of those renowned men, who, by 

 progressive steps, fixed on the basis of enlightened moderation, the liberty we 

 now enjoy ; which contains the result of the efforts of those patient investigators 

 who have evolved, in every branch of science and of art, all that conduces to 

 the enjoyment and embellishment of civilized life ; which contains the noble 

 works of those gifted persons who have left, for all time, imperishable monuments 

 of their sublime excursions into the domains of fancy and imagination ; and 

 which is, as it were, filled with the presence of those august sages who have 

 enunciated the immutable precepts on which depend the social, moral, and 

 religious welfare of the human race. 



REPLY OF HIS EXCELLENCY SIR HENRY BARELY. 



I attend here with much pleasure, at the request of the Trustees to open 

 formally the New Reading-Room. In listening to the interesting details which 

 have just been communicated, of the progress of the Melbourne Public Library, 

 it is impossible not to be struck with astonishment as well as gratification. 



When I recollect that at the time of my arrival this Institution was in 

 the first year of its existence, it cannot but surprise me to be informed that 

 it already contains a collection of books rivalling in number and in value those 

 of many long-established provincial libraries in Europe. 



I have little doubt that the Trustees will be enabled ere long, by the 

 liberality of the Legislature, to place it in the very first rank of Public Libraries, 

 and to render it altogether worthy of this wealthy Metropolis. 



Though an advocate for economy in financial affairs, I sincerely trust that 

 the last vote on the Estimates to be curtailed will ever be that for the 

 extension and completion of so noble a work ; for in what way can the people's 

 money be so well expended for the improvement and for the amusement of the 

 people of Victoria ? 



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