682 
PHARMACEUTICAL LEGISLATION. 
more active principles of medicines, has rendered their administration more 
dangerous, and their preparation therefore a work of acknowledged skill. 
And now, when the public almost ask for an assurance of qualification, is it 
not possible to obtain that further power which was denied to us in 1852 ? We 
say, yes ; and we say that the Pharmaceutical Society is master of the posi¬ 
tion. But many a general who has appeared in the outset of his campaign to be 
master of a position has signally failed in the end, and after failure how easy to 
mark the flaw in his tactics which led to disaster! None more common, perhaps, 
than that of undervaluing his adversary. 
And has the Pharmaceutical Society no enemy in this matter ? In 18C5 it 
certainly had; an enemy perhaps incapable of victory, but quite equal to mis¬ 
chief, as the issue proved. There were, and there are, chemists and druggists, 
who in the beginning were incredulous as to the success which might be 
achieved by union, and who deemed the aspirations of Jacob Bell and his 
friends as visionary ; they declined to join the Society when they might have 
done so without examination, and perhaps they have felt since that to submit to 
the ordeal would be a sort of degradation, but they have maintained their posi¬ 
tion in the trade, and an English Parliament, thank God! is always very conser¬ 
vative of vested interests. 
Now these are the men who baffled the Society formerly, and these are the 
men who could still delay legislation. Withal they are men whom the Pharma¬ 
ceutical Society was formed to embrace as members—Chemists and Druggists 
in business on their own account. We are glad, therefore, to find that the 
Special General Meeting of the Society, held on the 15th ult., by a great majo¬ 
rity, confirmed the proposition of the Council to admit them to membership in 
the event of obtaining Parliamentary authority to examine all men entering the 
business hereafter. 
It is not simply removing an enemy, it is also making a friend. The inter¬ 
ests of Pharmaceutical Chemists and Chemists and Druggists are identical; 
and although it may, perhaps, be thought that in our foregoing remarks we 
have treated the concession merely as a justifiable compromise, we by no means 
regard it entirely, or chiefly, as such. We hold to the first great principle of 
the British constitution, that those who are governed should have a voice in the 
governing body : this is justice. But it is something more than justice, it is 
policy ; inasmuch as the moment you give a man such a voice you make him 
conservative of the honour and interest of the body corporate, whereof he feels 
that he is an essential part. Inside the pale of the franchise he will be with 
you, outside he will be against you ; within he will promote your objects, be¬ 
cause they are his objects also ; without he will thwart you at every turn, be¬ 
cause he is not allowed to claim fellowship with his brethren ; he is rejected as 
one of the “ residuum." For these latter reasons we have urged the admission 
to membership of the Society of all men on the roll of Chemists and Druggists; 
of men already in business perhaps, because their union would enable the Phar¬ 
maceutical Society to compel the examination of all future dispensers ; of men to 
be registered by virtue of that examination, because it would be a test of their 
fitness for membership. The charge against us has been that the Major Exa¬ 
mination was too stringent for men engaged in small country shops. The 
opinion of competent authorities has been given that the man who could pass 
the Minor Examination might be safely trusted in his business. But beyond 
this we have only to look back to the progress of the examinations from the be¬ 
ginning; and, as we generally forecast the future by our experience of the past, 
we may safely prognosticate that if the Minor be found insufficient it will be 
amended to the necessities of the time. 
We could but remark that all the arguments of the remonstrants at the 
Special Meeting tended to show the value of the title “ Pharmaceutical Che- 
