THE PHARMACEUTICAL SOCIETY. 
GL3 
hinder us from doing so. A case occurred not many days ago, when an agent of Dr. 
Coffin was prosecuted for manslaughter, and the judge laid down the law, that every 
man, educated or not, might administer medicine at the same risk, and if it could be 
proved that ignorantly he had given that which had done mischief, he must bear the 
consequence,—medical or non-medical, the lav/ was alike to all. But now you seek to 
introduce a new principle, and say that a man shall not keep open shop for the com¬ 
pounding of prescriptions, whether persons choose to employ him or no, unless he has 
been examined. This may meet with formidable opposition, but the other you need not 
fear. But if it prove otherwise, and we fail—then fail, Gentlemen. Failure in support of 
the principles you are pledged to, of the interests of those whom you are bound to take 
care of, of those who now for twelve years have given their time and their money and 
their study in your school and laboratory, to fit themselves for that examination which 
the law required, and without which they were led to believe they could not attain 
honourable rank in their profession,—failure in support of this is more honourable than 
success would be at the price of abandoning it all. I, for one, would rather see the 
Society decay than consent to what would be so unworthy. I would borrow the words 
of Grattan about Irish independence, and say, “ I have rocked its cradle, and stood by its 
grave.” But you will not fail; you have the respect of the Government, the support of 
the Medical Council, the confidence of the medical profession, ana, I believe, the approba¬ 
tion of the great majority of the reflecting men both in and out of the Society ; and unless 
you are prepared to give up all this, I urge you, by all the efforts you have made, by the 
money you have spent in the promotion of those purposes that called you into being as 
a Society, by the interests of those who look up to you, and the honourable position you 
have attained,—I conjure you, by the toils and exertions of the living, and by the memory 
of the dead (for his bust is there), to receive and adopt this Bill. 
Mr. Mackay seconded Mr. Edwards’s motion, that “ this Bill be received and adopted,” 
and in doing so said he had to throw himself on the indulgence of the Meeting, in con¬ 
sequence of his having to follow immediately after the able and masterly speech ddelivered 
by Mr. Edwards, who had gone so fully into the subject as to leave him little to add 
to it. He cordially and heartily supported the motion, and he agreed in all that Mr. 
Edwards had said. There was, however, one point which Mr. Edwards had passed over 
that he would allude to. He wished to be as liberal as he possibly could to all those out¬ 
side the Society, and when it was said they wished by this Bill to exclude all the present 
outsiders from enjoying all the existing rights and privileges of the Society, he emphati¬ 
cally denied it, because provision was made for registration, and by their passing a Minor 
examination, they would be entitled to a vote in the government of the Society and to 
the name of Associate of the Pharmaceutical Society. He should be ashamed of the So¬ 
ciety. and equally so of the Legislature of the couutry, were they to cause a Bill to be 
passed that would admit every chemist and druggist indiscriminately to the rights and 
privileges of the Society. It had been remarked that the Local Committees had failed 
to ascertain what was the feeling of the chemists and druggists in their respective neigh¬ 
bourhoods with regard to this Bill. Now he was happy to be able to state that at their 
annual meeting in Edinburgh a resolution was passed in which they agreed to support 
the Bill in every shape and way, and he hoped there were other Local Secretaries who 
were prepared to make a similar statement. 
Mr. Collins said that after Mr. Edwards’s speech, he had very great misgivings as to 
his being the proper person selected to move an addition to the motion before the Meet¬ 
ing, but he was encouraged in the hope that he should have Mr. Edwards’s support, be¬ 
cause what he proposed was an echo of a resolution Mr. Edwards proposed twelve years 
ago, and which he then seconded, and therefore, upon the principle that “One good turn 
deserves another,” he hoped he should have Mr. Edwards’s support. If they were the 
tribunal who had to pass the Bill, the arguments used by Mr. Edwards would be most 
conclusive in its favour, but when they considered that the tribunal before which it had 
to go did not contain a single Pharmaceutical Chemist, or a chemist of any kind, but a 
body of men who would view the measure on grounds of general policy and expediency, 
the arguments which found favour in that Meeting, and were applauded to the echo, 
would have no effect in that other place. His friend (Mr. Edwards) assumed that all the 
members of the Pharmaceutical Society were educated men, but there were only between 
400 and 500 examined men out of the 2000 members. There were several thousand 
outside men who were equally as well qualified as the 1500 men who had not passed an 
