212 THE LIFE OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS 



" with an opportunity of wounding the pride of English- 

 men/' etc. Together with some broad misstatements 

 of fact. As a matter of taste, Banks's letter is by no 

 means beyond criticism, especially in its allusion to 

 " disastrous periods." There was certainly cause for the 

 enemy to blaspheme. 



However, nobody was one penny the worse. Sir 

 Joseph's cronies laughed both at, and with, him. His 

 old friend J. Lloyd reports that no less than seven copies 

 of the Register number had been sent to him in his Welsh 

 retreat, from different friends. 



As the opening of the winter session of the Royal 

 Society approached this affair was revived with some 

 energy. " A Fellow of the Royal Society " wrote to the 

 Political Register (November 4) with a torrent of angry 

 abuse and sneers about the recent insult to the Society, 

 with this conclusive declaration : " If to be one of the 

 forty foreign members of the Institut be better than 

 President of the Royal Society, let us find some other 

 person on whom to confer a favour long considered of the 

 highest order." So the murder was out. The small anti- 

 Banks faction wanted a new President. Sir Joseph was 

 re-elected in due course. 



$ Misogallus (who was never identified) fired a parting 

 shot in the Register, December 7, to which he subjoined 

 mock congratulations to Banks on his being once more 

 seated in the Presidential Chair. According to a letter 

 of Sir J. E. Smith, the attack in Cobbett's Register 

 was the handiwork of either Mr. Windham or his friend 

 E. A. Woodford, the Paymaster for Emigres allowances, 

 who had been offended by Banks's drastic conduct 

 over the La Billardrere collection of plants. Others 

 supposed it to have come from Bishop Horsley's pen. 



