142 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



as that history has never been written, to note the steps which were 

 taken to provide the new association with a formal constitution pur- 

 suant to' the resolution just chronicled. One month after the final 

 meeting of the Committee of Merchants a ballot was held for the elec- 

 tion of a Council of forty-one members.^ One hundred and fifty -three 

 persons appear to have voted, and Mr. Travers Hartley, long the most 

 active member of the old Committee, who had been for many years a 

 representative of Dublin in the College-green Parliament as a follower 

 of Grattan, was returned at the head of the list. At a further meeting 

 held on March 22, for the election of officers, Mr. Hartley was elected 

 President of the Chamber — a position which he appears to have held 

 continuously down to 1788. In that year rules were drawn up 

 for the annual election of officers of the Chamber, but no election 

 under these rules is recorded in the minute-book, which is a blank 

 from March 29, 1788, to 1805, except for a single entry in 1791. 

 "Whether or not the Chamber met during this long interval does not 

 certainly appear ; but from the fact that the first minute-book in the 

 possession of the Chamber of Commerce is indexed as " Old Chamber," 

 and that what is referred to as the " second " Chamber began to sit 

 in 1805, it may be assumed that the Chamber as originally started 

 failed to meet for several years, and was, in fact, dui'ing a period of 

 seventeen years a less efficient guardian of mercantile interests than 

 the old Committee of Merchants which it had replaced. The minute- 

 book ends with the year 1807. ^o records exist of any meetings from 

 that year until 1820, when the Chamber appears to have been recon- 

 stituted ; and it is doubtful for how many years its proceedings were 

 suspended. From the latter date the manuscript records have been 

 preserved in perfect sequence, and are in the custody of the present 

 Secretary of the Chamber, Mr. Perry. The printed reports of the 

 Chamber date from 1821. 



III. — The Ouzel Galley Society. 



At the end of the seventeenth centuiy, in the closing years of the 

 reign of "William III., a vessel known as the " Ouzel," in the owner- 

 ship of a Dublin merchant, and engaged, it is believed, in the Smyrna 

 trade, sailed from Uingsend for the Levant. Prior to her departure she 

 had been insured against risks, with Dublin underwriters, in the usual 

 way. In the ordinary course her absence would have been a lengthened 



^ Minutes of ChamlDer of Commerce. 



