ADDRESS 



BY 



THE REV. PROFESSOR WHEWELL, F.R.S., &c. 



Gentlemen, — It now becomes my business to take upon myself the office 

 of President of the British Association, in virtue of my election to that 

 situation, which took place at the meeting at Glasgow last year in the usual 

 form. The election was made in my absence, and contrary to ray expecta- 

 tion ; but of my own views and feelings with regard to the widdoni of the 

 choice then made, I shall not say one word. I will only remark, that any 

 apprehension which I may entertain of my own unfitness for this office, and 

 of the superior claims of others to the distinction, will have no other effect 

 than that of making me more diligent and scrupulous in the discharge of my 

 official duties, since those are the merits which are most within my reach, 

 and for the want of which no eminence, either in science or in society, can 

 compensate. It cannot but occur to those who are acquainted with the pro- 

 ceedings of the Association in past years, that it would be agreeable to the 

 general course of its usage, if this Chair were occupied by some illustrious 

 man of science belonging to this region of England ; (the region does not 

 want for such as by their powers and their European reputation might fitly 

 be placed at the head of any scientific association in the world) or again, if 

 it were occupied by some of those men of eminent rank and influence in the 

 district and in the empire, who have shown, by their attendance here and by 

 their services rendered to this meeting, their approbation of the objects of 

 the British Association, and their good will towards its members. But if 

 you had met under a President whose claims to your attention, however 

 high, were of a merely local nature, while at the same time no one of the 

 primary officers of the last meeting, the President and Vice-Presidents, were 

 present, to transmit into his hands, by a visible act, the dignity of which I 

 have the honour now to be the temporary holder, it might seem as if the 

 continuity of the Association had been interrupted, — as if this were rather a 

 new institution, arising in this district, than a new meeting of a body which 

 has had, now for eleven years, a connected and unbroken existence. My 

 hand may serve at least to transmit the torch from one place of assemblage 

 to another, — to bring the sacred fire which has been lit and kept alive at the 

 former meetings of our body, and to place it upon the altar which has been 

 erected in this great maritime town. On one account, at least, I may ven- 

 ture to undertake such a ministry as this : I have been a faithful attendant 

 upon the meetings of the Association ever since its first institution, and there 

 is scarcely any subordinate oflSce of labour or dignity in the constitution of 

 the body which I have not at one place or other discharged, with such zeal 

 and care as was in my power. However the Council may have judged well 

 or ill in this selection, they have at least this excuse, that they have not gone 

 out of their way to make it, — that they have not placed in this liigh office of 

 the Association one whose willingness to serve it, and to be for the time 

 identified with it, was at all doubtful, so far as past events could prove it. 



