17FPORT ON THE CONSTITUTION AND GOVERN - WE:NT OF THF, BRITISH 3117SEITM.
HOWEVER well a governing body may be constituted, experience begins strongly to testify that its first-born purity can hardly be expected to last longer than while the bells are ringing or the bon- fires blazing to commemorate its happy establishment. This sad tendency to decay seems alike inevitable in both the constituent and elected administration, and whether the basis upon which
-each is founded is wide or narrow. In the former ease, exactly as milers or electors are multiplied, individual care and responsibility lessen; inthe latter a close instrumentality, perhaps a secretary, trea- surer or single family, speedily absorbs all for its own ease, honour,
or gain. There may be a medium by which both extremes may be avoided ; some choice device untried, so nicely balanced by skilful adjustment of checks—of numbers, worth, intelligence, and trust —that Scylla and Charybdis may alike be shunned., and power he as little liable to abuse as its constituency to remissness or incom- petence. But the world has had no experience, either in political constitutions or corporations, of such a perfect or self-adjusting Apparatus as will guarantee perpetual or even prolonged adhe- rence to organic securities. In consequence, Parliamentary or Royal Commissions of Inquiry, popular appeals and agitation, or, in extreme emergencies, revolutionary convulsions, would seem to be the occasional and needful correctives of all forms of rule and curatorship, whether patrician or plebeian.
Recent trials abroad have promptly elucidated both alternatives of this dilemma ; but the first, or tendency to .deterioration of high-class sway, has been specially and still more:freshlyy brought out by the elaborate Report * we are about to notice. What the British Museum is, it is not needful to detail. It is just turned of a century old ; It was bought by public money, and by statute
vested in Trustees, in order " a free access to the collections- should be given to all studious and curious persons, at such times and in such manner" as the Trustees may prescribe. From suc- cessive additions by gift and purchase, it now forms an =rivalled depository of works of art, science, literature, and natural history, in which any member of the community mayjustly feel proud and interested as a superb monument of national and private muaifi- celiac. The expenditure in buildings alone -since 1823 has amounted to 700,0001. The sums directly expended in the purchase of objeets for the Museum amount to 345,000/. ; and the value of the private donations received in twelve years prior to 1835 was estimated by the Secretary to amount to little short of 400,0001.
The due care and management of so rich and vast an accumula-
tion are a general concern. By the act of 1755, the custody is chiefly intrusted to the principal Librarian,—an officer chosen. by the Crown from two persons recommended by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, and the speaker of the Mouse of Commons,: these three are termed " principal Trustees," in contra- distinction -to the forty-eight incorporated Trustees, and have the appointment of the rest of the officers and servants of the Museum. Oft he in, *rated Trustees one is named by the Crown; twenty- three are b dal—Ministers of State, Judges, Bishops, and Presi- dents of Learned Societies ; nine others represent the families of Sloane, Harley, Cotton, and other donors ; the remaining fifteen are elected from mien of reputed literary or scientific eminence,— who in truth do all the work that the Trustees do, except the exercise of patronage. • The Commissioners appointed by the Crown to inquire into the Consti- tution and Government of the British Museum, and whose names are sub- scribed to the Report, are, the Earl of Ellesmere, Lord Seymour, Viscount Canning, the Bishop of Norwich, Lord Langdale, (Master of the Rolls,) Lord Wrottesley, Sir Philip Egerton, Bait, Sir Charles Lemon, Bart., Sir R. lin- pep Murchison' Joseph Hume, M.P., A. Rutherford, M.P., (Lord-advocate of Scotland,) Samuel Rogers, Esq., R. lionektou Mikes, M.P., John George Shaw Lefevre, Esq. A constitutional difficulty has occurred to the Commissioners, namely, whether the practical management of the Museum is vested in the principal Librarian or the Trustees. Full powers, it is admitted, have been given to the Trustees for the making of rules and orders for the regulation, inspection, and control of the Museum ; but whether they wore meant executively to interfere, or to leave that division of labour wholly to the Librarian, is doubted. In practice, however, they have done both—legislated and acted by the intervention of Sub-Committees : and probably this was the intent of the statute of George IL ; for it is manifest that in every good government the legislative power must be supreme, other- wise all its endeavours may be marred or frustrated at the mere pleasure of the executive ministry. But it is idle to demur at a trifle of this kind, when so much more grave derelictions remain to be encountered, and to which we shall at once turn, having out- lived the paper constitution of the national repository. There is only one example of corporation decay that we can call to mind as exactly parallel to that of the British Museum ; and it is the Society of Merchant Tailors of the city of Bristol, of which an account is given in the Charity Commissioners' Reports. This ancient fraternity, from a long course of in-breeding or other sterile practices, had dwindled down to two individuals—Messrs. Palmer and Amos ; who, with the absolute disposal of large trust revenues, represented all that remained of their predecessors—wardens, trea- surers, auditors, court of assistants, and brethren—of the time of Richard the Second; and who, by some marvellous subdivision of themselves, filled all offices and discharged all duties ; receiving, paying, auditing, and squandering, just as if the past machinery of the corporation had been in full strength and activity. With hardly a shade of difference this is the predicament into which the British Museum has virtually lapsed, as shown by the Report and elucidated by the Minutes of Evidence. Despite the formidable array of Forty-eight, consisting of all that is high in station, spirit- nal in dignity, learned and eminent in science and literature,- despite all apparent control and interference of general meetings and partial meetings, of standing committee and sub-committees, —the entire body and soul of the general government, apart from occasional nominal assistance and minor operative agency, has for years been concentrated in his Grace the Archbishop of Canter- bury, aided by the Reverend Josiah Forshall, the Secretary of the institution. The fact is curious to happen in broad day in the centre of this great metropolis—as curious as anything preserved in the Museum; and were not the canons against stuffing aught save birds and beasts, two official glass cases certainly ought to be reserved for greater rarities. If Mr. Forshall and the Lord Primate have been able to fulfil the duties of administration, what, it will be naturally inquired, have been the real or ostensible offices discharged by the Board of Forty- eight ? We shall try to explain. The three principal Trustees are occupied, or supposed to be occupied, in the dispensation of patron- age by the selection of proper officers and servants for the Museum. The twenty-three honorary Trustees are not expected to do any- thing further than to cast on the Great Russell Street repository the lustre of their high names and offices in Church, State, and Law. The fifteen elected Trustees, whom the world vainly imagined to be in harness and vigorously exerting themselves, we shall by a more careful analysis of the rota of duties of all parties, show to be very lightly taxed. It is obvious, indeed, at the outset, that unless some apt abridgment of labour had been devised, it would have been next to impossible for two persons to have managed so vast and complicated an establishment. In the first place, then, the principal Librarian, respecting whom the Commissioners were doubtful whether he was not entitled to the entire practical management of the Museum, has been entirely set aside. Sir Henry Ellis sends in his periodical report to the Board, in common with Sir F. Madden, Mr. Panizzi, and other heads of departments : the Secretary reads them, or selects from them such portions as he thinks meet; none, however, of the heads of departments are present at the Board for explanation—not even the principal Librarian, through whose hands all the reports pass : the Secretary acts for all ; and he may withhold papers—there is no check upon him. (Minutes of Evidence, 534.)
According to the statutes, four general meetings of the Trustees are required to be held annually; but the summons does not state the business likely to come before them : it is prepared for them by the Secretary the evening before or the morning of the meeting. At these meetings it was doubtless intended that thepreceding quarterly management of the Museum by the Standing Committee and Sub-Committees should be overlooked and scrutinized, and, if approved, confirmed. But the duty is evaded or neglected : the corporate seal is set to any petition to Parliament or legal instru- ment requiring that formality; and the minutes of the Standing Committee are read over, or rather, as the Secretary states, " are supposed to be read over." (Minutes of Evidence, 494.) These
minutes occasionally run to great le 60 or 70 pages, some- times 200 or 300 pages of manuscript; but no instance is remem- bered where they were not confirmed as of course.
Ostensibly, the practical management of the Museum is vested in the Standing Committee, assisted by the Sub-Committees of departments and finance ; but these provisions appear almost as ideal in actual business operations as in name. The Standing Committee, agreeably to the resolution passed in 1755, was to be fifteen in number, persons of leisure and ability, on whom, in con- junction with any other Trustees willing to attend, individual responsibility should devolve. Notwithstanding constant refer- ences to this Standing Committee and its duties, it %ever seems to have had any positive existence, so as to' fix upon any one the responsibility of its acts. These are the Secretary's avowals-
451. "Has there ever been a meeting appointing certain Trustees or mem- bers of the Standing Committee ? "—" Not that I am aware of." 452. "Since you have been Secretary there has been no minute appoint- ing the members of the Standing Committee ?"—" I think not." 453. "Nor appointing any individual members to fill up any vacancy made bythe resignation or death of a member of the Standing Committee ? " —" No."
Upon this thing of " shreds and patches," without tangible shape, substance, or stability—that fluctuates in number by the will of its members—and for which " certain Trusteee are always summoned by the Secretary, and others are not summoned," (Mi- nutes, 449,) and of whom three are a quorum—rests the general
management of the British Museum. • - • - A quorum—that is, the minimum number competent to act—of the Sub-Committeee is two. To these are nominally (for nearly all is nominal in the government of the Museum) confided the duties of finance and of visiting and inspecting the several depart- ments—as of natural history, the libraries, antiquities,prints and drawings, and making reports thereupon. The. Sub-COmmittees are also required by the statutes and rules to " examine into the progress made by the officers in their catalogues and arrange- ments." But all is obsolete ; the Committees have vanished like the aborigines of a bygone age, and become extinct. They never sit to transact general business ; nor has there been such a thing as an annual visitation by them for years past. The filling-up of vacancies is the last subject we can touch upon this week ; t and in which the tact of Mr. Forshall for despatching business shines out. .411appointments except one, as before stated, are vested in the three principal Trustees : of course on a vacancy they should meet, or at least communicate. But these requisites to fitness of choice are not observed Mr. Forshall does not, unless it be the head of a department or his assistant, inform them of a va- cancy. All that the Secretary does is to notify the vacancy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, leaving it to his Grace to Communicate with the other Trustees : whether the Archbishop does communi- cate or confer with his colleagues, Mr. Forshall cannot say. He takes the written form of appointment to him with a "blank for the name," and his Grace fills it up. The Secretary has no recol- lection of the insertion of a name by any but the' Archbishop, ex- cept in one instance, and it was the appointment of Mr. Panizzi by the direct interference of the Lord Chancellor with the Lambeth Palace monopoly. (Minutes, 642.) For the remedy of abuses, for the substitution of realities for mockeries, and the reestablishment of the government of the Museum in conformity with the original purposes of its foundation, the Commissioners recommend the appointment of " a responsible Executive Council," with a paid or unpaid Chairman, and a certain number of unpaid Councillors. We should say, pay them all, both principal and subordinates; let us have no more shams. Men like to be paid, even if they do not want or care for the money : they take it as a tribute to their worth and services; besides, it gives the public a just lien and command over them.
t The management of the British Museum is not a new topic in the Spec- tator: it was last discussed by the late Sir Harris Nicolas, in three able papers published in May 1846.
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