Further, I say openly and
plainly, that this fund is pompously and unnaturally administered
at great expense, instead of being quietly administered at small
expense; and that the secrecy to which it lays claim as its
greatest attribute, is not kept; for through those "two respectable
householders," to whom reference must be made, the names of the
most deserving applicants are to numbers of people perfectly well
known. The members have now got before them a plain statement of
fact as to these charges; and it is for them to say whether they
are justifiable, becoming, or decent. I beg most earnestly and
respectfully to put it to those gentlemen who belong to this
institution, that must now decide, and cannot help deciding, what
the Literary Fund is for, and what it is not for. The question
raised by the resolution is whether this is a public corporation
for the relief of men of genius and learning, or whether it is a
snug, traditional, and conventional party, bent upon maintaining
its own usages with a vast amount of pride; upon its own annual
puffery at costly dinner-tables, and upon a course of expensive
toadying to a number of distinguished individuals. This is the
question which you cannot this day escape.
SPEECH: LONDON, NOVEMBER 5, 1857.
[At the fourth anniversary dinner of the Warehousemen and Clerks
Schools, which took place on Thursday evening, Nov.
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