232 Horticultural Society and Garden. 



luxurious but more valuable productions of Flora and Pomona, and to 

 teach them how to make the best use of the spade and the watering-pot. 

 I would ask you whether these objects are more likely to be advanced by 

 the admission of 2,800 well-dressed persons, to promenade and eat ices and 

 fruit in the garden, than by giving a free access to the garden to every 

 member of the Society, allowing him to send to it, without reserve, every 

 person eager for information on horticulture, at all times, and having those 

 constantly in attendance who are able to give the information which is 

 sought for, as well as specimens of whatever may be necessary to aid the 

 enquirer in his researches, as far as the benefit of horticulture is concerned? 

 Sir, I have been refused specimens from the garden of the Society, merely 

 because they had not yet been described. I have been several years a mem- 

 ber of the Society, and I know no more of its internal affairs than an utter 

 stranger ; yet, I have overlooked these evils from a desire to see it advance, 

 even in a moderate degree, the great national object for which it was insti- 

 tuted ; but can I remain longer silent when, instead of this, I see an immense 

 revenue expended to very little purpose, and hear that even this, great as 

 it is, must be eked out by converting the garden into a place of fashionable 

 amusement ? 



You seem, Sir, to think that there is as much propriety in the Society 

 breakfasting, as you term it, once a year in this garden, as dining in a 

 tavern. This argument, Sir, is more specious than solid. In the first 

 place, it was not the Society that breakfasted in the garden, but everyone 

 who could pay a guinea, provided they could pass muster before the tribunal 

 of the ladies patronesses, and were not the wives nor daughters of Fellows to 

 whose names, in the list of the Society, no asterisk is added, — persons who 

 have no particular regard for horticulture; who went to the gardens not to 

 examine the advancement of the art, or to hear of its prosperity, but 

 merely to see and to be seen, and to obtain a subject for conversation in the 

 fashionable coteries of the succeeding week. Sir, I am not fond of taverns 

 nor of tavern-dinners, but I think one dinner of the Society,at the Freemason's 

 Tavern, even dull as it has hitherto been, worth five hundred of the fetes in 

 the garden on the 25d of July. At the dinner, real gardeners are present ; 

 scientific men, capable of appreciating the labours of the Society, are pre- 

 sent ; the dessert which is displayed is examined as to its value in a horti- 

 cultural point of view, as well as eaten ; the conversation it excites is con- 

 nected with the objects of the Society, and the meeting together of two or 

 three hundred individuals, actuated by the same useful motives, gives an 

 impulse to the future exertions of the Society, which it never can obtain 

 from twenty times the sum which has been thrown into its treasury by the 

 late fete. Horticulturists, Sir, may be as social and as gallant as any other 

 description of men, but there is a modus in rebus, and a time for every thing. 



You must forgive me, Sir, for differing from you, in toto, in your remark 

 that " it is obviously allowable and praiseworthy to call in the influence of 

 fashion as an auxiliary support to useful institutions ; and it will not be 

 denied, we think, that large assemblages are calculated to generalise the 

 manners, the feelings, and the taste of those who compose them." Now, 

 Sir, so far from believing that fashion is a useful auxiliary to such an insti- 

 tution as the Horticultural Society, I think the Society has been degraded 

 by receiving any aid from such a source. The objects of the Society, if 

 steadily pursued, are sufficiently important to insure its permanence and 

 prosperity, and to obtain funds adequate to its support, if its affairs be ad- 

 ministered with suitable economy. As to the effects of such fetes on the 

 morals and happiness of society, there would be little difficulty in refuting 

 that part of your argument ; but I have already dilated more than I 

 intended, and shall now conclude, in the hope that your zeal for such 

 exhibitions in our gardens may be allowed to cool for want of any future 



