180 
PROCEEDINGS OP THE VICTORIA INSTITUTE. 
tution intended for the real benefit of the people of Trinidad is 
treated. The fact is that such an Institution as ours is viewed 
with hostility and jealousy by influential classes who are averse 
to anything intended for the benefit of the people and who 
employ their influence overt and covert in spreading ideas hos- 
tile to such Institutions. But however much man may persecute 
truth his existence and welfare after all depend upon it and the 
real true object of such Institutions as the Public Library and 
the Victoria Institute is to keep alive the flame of truth amid 
the growing fogs of error and falsehood which spread around us. 
Lpon the maintenance of this light of truth depends our exis- 
tence and prosperity as a community — those who wish to destroy 
or pervert these Institutions are those to whom the light of truth 
and the welfare of humanity are hateful. 
I exhibit to you copies of some of the old catalogues and 
lists of the Public Library. In view of those I think it could 
hardly be said by any one that the person who took the trouble 
no meie y to preserve and bind these catalogues but to insert in 
them the leaflets containing fugitive lists of books issued from time 
Y 116 an i t0 ’ n writing in the appropriate places in the 
catalogues the additions made from time to time, took no interest 
“tt Lfbrary. That these catalogues and lists are not 
hand! of H ,dU ® fir f t] y. to J the treatment they met with at the 
mitv in1l! n°'' i erS friends and secondly to the want of unifor- 
precludes theh- > and t l , e Setting up of the catalogues which 
of uniform if v * m ^i P ro P er ty bound together. This same want 
vfcSSnSujrSbL 1 wSShi" ‘ he 
.t tl,eir s“ iS"£ a 
ephemeral nfa? 7 • *7 ^fluently serve only for the 
»' «»« the.. J thrown 
mnpihvSTr f ° r r, t °n“ y ll " t 1 >»™ th > 
and that it was 3 of Se 7 7 ° f 7° Field ^uralttW Club 
to place such work great aims of the Scientific Association 
such an Institution as toe “^Permanent basis by means of 
Institution and 7,r7!!ng dm r ‘l IaStlt v U r> ^king it a popular 
the hands of the nromnto™ ( . s P°usible control of it into 
tin. of .ho VioZST„X. f o“L“tXSr,, 
infused, while securities were retained'to ° f po P ular control was 
diversion of the public money to unwortbiTn ^ ^ -7^ Pf sible 
■>y or unsuitable objects 
