xxviil Report to the General Meeting. 
amount of the Society's funded property now amounting to 7700/., 
and the current cash balance in the bankers' hands to 1200Z. 
The Council steadily maintain their firm conviction that the 
permanency and usefulness of the Society are dependent, in a 
great measure, upon the possession of such a fixed amount of re- 
served capital as will carry on at all times, and under every cir- 
cumstance, the current machinery of the establishment ; and they 
therefore not only receive with great satisfaction the result of the 
Finance Committee's care and attention in thus husbanding the 
resources of the Society, and increasing annually its permanent 
investment, but they are also strongly convinced of the absolute 
necessity of abstaining from embarking the Society's funds in any 
doubtful speculations, and of strictly confining them to immediate 
objects of legitimate and undoubted importance. 
With respect to the best mode of collecting the subscriptions, 
the Council have confirmed the recommendation of the Finance 
Committee, that while those friends of the Society in various 
counties, who would undertake the trouble, should be requested 
to favour the Society with their inspection of the list of such sub- 
scriptions as might be outstanding and unpaid in their respective 
neighbourhoods, and communicate at their discretion with the 
parties whose names had been transmitted to them, the remittance 
of subscriptions by means of Post-office orders should be gene- 
rally recommended by the Society to its members, as the most 
direct, practicable, and secure ; this system of payment having 
been found perfectly successful and satisfactory to all parties who 
have adopted it, and each member of the Society enabled, by its 
means, to remit to the Secretary, as it has become due, and from 
every part of the country, however remote, the subscription of the 
year, and to obtain, by immediate return of post, an official notifi- 
cation of the reception and registration of his money. It has been 
chiefly by this means that no less a sum than 1097/. has been re- 
ceived since last Christmas, on account of arrears alone. 
The Council have decided that in future all subscriptions due 
in advance on the 1st of January in each year shall be considered 
as in arrear on the 1st of June ensuing. 
