274 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1861. Society. That I was not against the change may be inferred 

 from my being the acting Secretary of the Committee of Council 

 which drew up the new by-laws, and the mover of their adop- 

 tion at the general meeting which passed them. My assigned 

 reason was that nothing could be too democratic for a scientific 

 society. I think so still. But I saw in silence, though with 

 great satisfaction, that the changes would speedily bring to issue 

 and to settlement questions, on the right and speedy settlement 

 of which the prosperity of the Society depends. And this is a 

 much better way than could be opened by the results of a period 

 of smouldering discontent. I saw that the good sense of the 

 whole body would soon be turned to reflection upon the question 

 whether the Society could exist in honour and in usefulness upon 

 any other basis than that of peaceful government by a Council : 

 not this Council, nor that Council, but a Council. That is to say, 

 government by one Council, under the statutory changes of its 

 details, until that Council ceases to be in harmony with its con- 

 stituents, and then government by another Council, composed, in 

 strong part at least, of different men. 



I did not suspect that the Society would be so fortunate as 

 that reflection on this point should first be promoted by so slight 

 a pair of matters as the substitution of one President for another, 

 and the retirement of so dispensable a member of the Council 

 as myself. It is just as I could have wished. My own secession 

 will not whatever it might have done twenty years ago im- 

 pede the action of the Society, while the retirement of a person 

 who has known it so thoroughly as I have done for thirty years, 

 during eighteen of which he has officiated as Secretary, will 

 certainly lead to that reflection which I desire to promote. 



The circumstances under which I retire are, in my view, as 

 follows. Half-a-dozen of the Fellows, desiring to pay a compliment 

 to a highly respected member of the Council, proposed him as 

 President, in opposition to another Fellow proposed by the Council. 

 That this, and no more than this, was their first intention, I feel well 

 assured. But, as they grew warm in the business, they availed 

 themselves of the usual resources of opposition the personal 

 canvass, the newspaper article, and the invention of a principle to 

 justify a course which, in the first instance, had no reason except 

 the innocent one which I have stated. They lay it down that 

 A B having been President three times, and C D not at all, it is 

 now, as it were, C D's turn. That is to say, they propound a 

 law of rotation, independently of any reason which the Council 



