XXX 
Report  to  the  General  Meeting. 
ment  of  the  Society,  as  compositions  for  life.  The  arrears  of 
subscription,  so  long  the  source  of  trouble  to  the  Finance  Com- 
mittee, and  of  irregularity  to  the  income  of  the  Society  and  its 
means  of  usefulness,  have  at  length,  by  the  persevering  attention 
of  that  Committee,  been  brought  under  salutary  control  and 
placed  in  train  for  final  settlement.  The  names  of  defaulters, 
whose  tardy  fulfilment  of  their  obligations  to  a Society  into 
which  they  had  voluntarily  entered,  and  whose  unwilling  com- 
pliance with  the  chartered  regulations  of  the  general  body  have 
thus  occasioned  so  much  inconvenience  to  the  Society  and  injury 
to  its  available  income,  have  been  gradually  removed  from  the 
list  of  members,  and  replaced  by  the  names  of  willing  contribu- 
tors to  its  funds,  who  cheerfully  acquiesce  in  a recognition  of  the 
validity  of  general  laws,  enacted,  under  the  charter  of  the  So- 
ciety, for  indiscriminate  application  to  all  its  members,  and  for 
carrying  out  by  united  efforts  the  great  and  useful  objects  of 
their  incorporation.  The  Council,  in  dealing  with  this  question 
of  arrears,  have  accordingly  felt  it  their  bounden  duty  to  the 
body  at  large,  acting  as  their  representatives  and  the  appointed 
guardians  of  their  common  interest,  to  take  the  most  decisive 
measures  for  bringing  the  settlement  of  this  long-contested  ques- 
tion to  a final  issue,  by  an  appeal  to  the  county  courts  of  the 
kingdom.  The  administration  of  the  Society  being  situate  in 
London,  and  various  obligations  having  been  incurred  within  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  metropolitan  courts,  the  Council  have  com- 
menced their  actions  by  summoning  to  those  courts  such  of  their 
members  in  and  about  London  as  are  more  than  two  years  in 
arrear  of  their  subscription,  and  who  are  known,  or  are  found 
on  inquiry,  to  be  in  circumstances  to  justify,  in  their  cases,  the 
full  enforcement  of  the  claims  in  question.  The  summonses 
having  been  issued,  the  parties,  on  receiving  them,  have,  with  a 
single  exception,  declined  offering  any  further  opposition  to  the 
legal  claim  thus  made  upon  them  on  the  part  of  the  Society,  and 
have  paid  into  court  the  whole  amount  of  arrears,  as  well  as  the 
costs  incurred.  In  the  single  case  referred  to,  the  summons  was 
not  answered  by  the  defendant’s  either  discharging  the  claim  or 
