xxvii] FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 59 



clothes, or of postage-stamps are each of great interest to 

 more or less extensive sections of the community, and much 

 may be said in each case to prove the value of the study ; 

 but surely no honest representative of the nation would vote, 

 say, the moderate sum of a million sterling for three museums 

 to exhibit these objects, with a full staff of beadles, curators, 

 and professors at an equally moderate expenditure of £10,000 

 annually, with perhaps a like sum for the purchase of 

 specimens. But if we once admit the right of the Govern- 

 ment to support institutions for the benefit of any class of 

 students and amateurs, however large and respectable, we 

 adopt a principle which will lead us to offer but a weak 

 resistance to the claims of less and less extensive interests 

 whenever they happen to become the fashion. 



"If it be asked (as it will be) what we are to do with 

 existing institutions supported by Government, I am prepared 

 to answer. Taking the typical examples of the National 

 Gallery and the British Museum, I would propose that these 

 institutions should be reorganized, so as to make them in the 

 highest degree instructive and entertaining to the mass of 

 the people ; that no public money should be spent on the 

 purchase of specimens, but what they already contain should 

 be so thoroughly cared for and utilized as to render these 

 establishments the safest, the best, and the most worthy 

 receptacles for the treasures accumulated by wealthy amateurs 

 and students, who would then be ready to bestow them on 

 the nation to a greater extent than they do at present. From 

 the duplicates which would thus accumulate in these institu- 

 tions the other great centres of population in the kingdom 

 should be proportionately supplied, and from the Metropolitan 

 centres trained officers should be sent to organize and super- 

 intend local institutions, such a proportion of their salaries 

 being paid by Government as fairly to equalize the expendi- 

 ture of public money over the whole kingdom, and thus not 

 infringe that great principle of equality and justice which, I 

 maintain, should be our guide in all such cases. 



"Alfred R. Wallace." 



