November 9, 1872.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
375 
trait in his character ; how economy led to wealth, how 
-perseverance and a high order of moral worth brought 
fame, and placed him in the position of our philosopher 
and our guide. My visit to you will not have been un¬ 
productive, if I counsel you to peruse attentively the 
‘ Life of John Bell.’ I look upon that memoir as a pre¬ 
cious gift to pharmaceutical literature ; in it his bio¬ 
grapher has depicted, with the hand of filial duty, that 
caution even to timidity, that benevolence, and that 
unswerving and heroic resolution in the path of right. 
This memoir has been recently reprinted, and the few 
copies I have here this evening I beg you to accept. 
A pharmacist, whom I know well had read that life ere 
lie commenced business; and during some years, when the 
battle of life was rude, he would have yielded up the 
contest or sunk into apathy, but he had the portrait of 
John Bell framed and so placed that each morning that 
fatherly, placid face met his eye, and bade him at the 
dawn of another day be of good hope. Ex uno disce 
multos; for many, I doubt not, have been thus 
influenced. 
I have lightly touched upon your personal duties, and 
glanced at the duties of the Council, as regards the 
principle of its aid to you, to assist at their commence¬ 
ment, or j during their first exigencies, your provincial 
schools; but I would remind you that this, though urgent 
and important, must in its nature be temporary; and 
ihat duties responsible and permanent attach to its 
position, so long as the Pharmaceutical Council has the 
public spirit to heartily fulfil its task. I well remember the 
’.time when pharmaceutical chemists did not throw up their 
-caps and cheer for the approaching incorporation of our 
trade; in fact, it was not fashionable then to do so, and 
•those who at that time withheld their influence from 
that movement were doubtless not unbiassed by the 
prospect of onerous obligations. Thus it behoves the 
Council not to cease or falter in its efforts to maintain 
the scope of pharmacentical examinations at a standard 
perfectly satisfactory to the Government; to render 
their details incontrovertibly just and practical in the 
interests of our own body; to keep a watchful eye on he 
Register, that it may be a perfect record of our corpora¬ 
tion ; to sustain the fabric which we are all so proud to 
call our own, the cradle of pharmacy in Bloomsbury 
Square, and its counterpart in your capital; to scrutinize 
every shilling of the expenditure ; to aid in sustaining 
•our Benevolent Fund, etc., and to watch, with a vigilant 
•eye, every public question that may affect us either in 
its discussion or by its decision. You know that the 
Act of 1868 did not pass without the opposing action of 
some influential legislators being apparent, or the 
prompting of jealousy being perceived; and it will 
-ever require the greatest consideration, soundest 
judgment, and strongest influence of the Council, to 
maintain, without aggressiveness or subserviency, the 
principles of that Act; for the moment you create in the 
political body a distinct corporation with a recognized 
public position and legal powers, you constitute it a 
•distinct institution of the State, and thus it becomes in¬ 
volved, like other public organizations or independent 
.national States, in the necessity of justifying its existence 
and preserving its integrity against any power without. 
As I wish to speak generally of our trade interests, I would 
beg of you permission to glance at the clouds that I believe 
dower in our political atmosphere, premising that no re¬ 
mark I may make is directed against any minister per¬ 
sonally or against any party. I shall speak strictly of 
Administrations and not of Governments. 
The yearly increasing extent of legislation required 
.by our rapid material advancement does certainly out¬ 
pace the progress some Administrations succeed in 
making; and certain questions that do not present them¬ 
selves as of imperial or political importance escape the 
personal care of a minister, and devolve upon a subor¬ 
dinate department of State, which to prove its energy 
for its work, and full of belief that the eyes of all 
England are constantly upon it, expecting it to do 
something, would edge on a minister to place on the 
statute book all sorts of red-tape regulations, such as 
naturally emanate from an office. Another danger 
is a species of legislation not unknown towards the 
latter end of a session, and it comes to pass somewhat 
in this manner: A member is riding a hobby, and the 
Government puts him off for a time by expressing 
an intention of proposing a measure itself on the same 
subject. Meanwhile, no very explicit information comes 
from the whipper-in as to the state of feeling in the 
House on the details of this question, or time passes, 
and it abandons the attempt for the session. The member 
gets on his hobby again, determined to tilt against 
the Government, which then intimates that the measure 
if generally acceptable to the House will not be opposed 
by it; this means that if the aforesaid member can get 
one of the Opposition to be god-father to his measure, 
and thus disarm any action from the cross benches, and 
besides secure a good introduction of the Bill to the 
Upper House, he will have the tacit support of the 
Government, which can then point to this Act, often 
with a popular title, as part of the work of the ses¬ 
sion, and last, not least, it gets rid of a troublesome ques¬ 
tion. So there is wonderful accord in the Houston 
this subject; instead of the keenness of a political 
debate, all is uninteresting and calm; for the nonce 
there is an unnatural quiescence in the House, such as 
we witness in certain cages exhibited in our streets, 
where cats, mice, sparrows, hawks, etc.^ live together 
in harmony. Yet this happy family legislation I have 
no love for; it passes too much as a matter of course, 
and is slovenly. We saw one example of it last session 
in “The Adulteration of Food Act,” which, in its dif¬ 
ferent stages, passed with the utmost indifference, and 
there was just time, in the House of Lords, to amend 
some mischievous clauses affecting the sale of drugs. 
The first danger I do not look upon without concern. 
If the sagacity of the statesman is sometimes wanting, 
how will it fare when the initiative of measures is dele¬ 
gated to the placeman ? I believe class interests would 
be sacrificed in detail to the public detriment. Was not 
the Megsera sent to founder on the high seas through a 
minister listening to departmental representation ? Did 
the late appointment of a judge to the Privy Council 
emanate from a minister, or did it result from external in¬ 
fluence, and does not that judge sit at the Privy Council 
clothed in ermine, and at the same time, so far as public 
censure can attach to a public appointment, with the 
shirt of Nessus sticking to his back ? In short, has not 
this system of administering our affairs lately drawn 
from the second leader of the House of Commons, a 
gentleman whom you are about to honour by installing as 
Lord Rector of your University, the summary and 
declaration that “if to menace or attack every class and 
every calling, every institution and every interest were 
a policy, then he had no policy.” As you recollect, our 
class has not escaped the meshes of the above molesta¬ 
tion ; the Pharmaceutical Society was, after the Act of 
1868, quickly called upon to stand on the defensive, and 
your Council had to win its spurs almost in the first days 
of its new existence. Now it hopes to wear them with 
caution and prudence, for I take it that the attitude of 
opposition should at all times be preceded by the deepest 
thought and conviction, for a proposition that may pre¬ 
sent itself to woo our consent with accents soft as the 
breath of zephyr, if founded on a real necessity, and not 
supported by a technical argument, will become a popular 
demand, and swell to the force of a hurricane in the 
path of which every interest must bend. But in case 
of danger, you would expect, and justly, that we, and 
all, should be animated by one common impulse, and 
relying on the Council to lead and encourage our 
constitutional proceedings, should we not be troubled 
if its progress were checked in the narrow and tortuous 
channel of timidity, or wrecked on the shoals and quick- 
