407 
the funds of the Academy, and with this sum Government Three-and- 
a-Half per Cent. Debentures to the amount of £1400 were immediately 
purchased. 
The last instalment of Mr. Cunningham’s Bequest having been 
paid, the Treasurer was authorised by the Academy to vest in the 
Ballast Office Securities so much of the money of the Academy as he 
should think proper. No investment, however, took place in conse- 
quence, either at this period or for a number of years afterwards. 
Though the Cunningham Bequest was thus received in full from the 
representatives of Mr. Conyngham, the name of the Cunningham Fund 
has since the year 1812 been applied, not to the moneys resulting from 
that bequest, but to the Parliamentary grant; and the Three and a-Half 
per Cents. purchased with this grant have been regarded as affected 
with the trusts of Mr. Cunningham’s will. This view, which was cer- 
tainly incorrect, was first put forward in the report of a committee ap- 
pointed in the year 1812, to examine into the state of the funds of the 
Academy; and was tacitly adopted and acted on by subsequent com- 
mittees down to the year 1843, when, as we shall see, it was thought 
right to take the opinion of counsel on the subject. 
In 1819, a special committee was appointed to consider and report 
on the state of the Cunningham Fund. This committee, understanding 
by the words ‘‘ Cunningham Fund” those moneys which had been in- 
vested in Government Stock, reported that the total amount of interest 
on the fund, received both from the Hon. Mr. Conyngham and the Three- 
and-a-Half per Cents., exceeded the amount expended by the Academy 
on premiums and medals by £731 8s. 9d. They recommended that 
the Academy should add to the fund a sum sufficient to make it up to 
the even amount of £1600, which should be taken as forming the per- 
manent fund of the Cunningham Bequest.* 
The whole interest on the fund thus constituted was not expended 
in premiums and medals; so that in the year 1843 the fund standing to 
the credit of the Academy, and regarded as the Cunningham Fund, is 
stated in the case submitted to counsel to have amounted to £1665 4s. 2d., 
besides a sum of £262 19s. 6d., part of the interest accrued since 1819 
due to the fund by the Academy. 
Counsel, having been consulted in the same year on the question 
whether the Three-and-a-Half per Cents. funded in 1800 and 1819 
were to be regarded as legally constituting the Cunningham Fund, 
gave the opinion that after such a lapse of time, and so many acts of 
the Academy, this stock must be taken as appropriated for that pur- 
pose, and affected with the trusts of the Cunningham Bequest. 
* The committee also recommended that an account should be opened under the 
head of “ Cunningham Premiums ;” and that the different sums received and expended 
for that account should for the future be regularly entered in it, instead of being, as often 
heretofore, mixed up with the general accounts of the Academy. This account, how- 
ever, was not opened. 
