Munich, April 28, 1797.
I feel myself very highly honoured by the distinguished mark of esteem and regard which the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor has conferred on me, and I beg leave through you to return the Society my respectful and grateful acknowledgments.
This flattering proof of the approbation of those most respectable persons who compose the Society will tend very powerfully to encourage me to persevere in those endeavours to promote the important objects they have in view, by which I first obtained their notice and esteem.
I am very sanguine in my expectations of the good which will be done by this Society; they will, however, be able to do much more by examples—by models that can be seen and felt—than by anything that can be said or written.
The following year he wrote:
Munich, May 13, 1798.
The rapid progress you are making in your most interesting and laudable undertakings affords me a high degree of satisfaction. It proves that I was not mistaken when I concluded that, notwithstanding the alarming progress of luxury and corruption of taste and of morals in England, there is still good sense and energy to be found, even in the highest classes of society, where the influx of wealth has operated most powerfully. Go on, my dear sir, and be assured that when you shall have put doing good in fashion, you will have done all that human wisdom can do to retard and prolong the decline of a great and powerful nation that has arrived at, or passed, the zenith of human glory.
And again:
Munich, June 8, 1798.
I have received your letter from Brighton of the 12th ult. You can hardly imagine the high degree of pleasure and satisfaction which I feel at your success in your most laudable undertakings. Go on, my dear sir, and be assured that you will contribute more essentially to the revival of taste and morals, of energy, industry, benevolence, and prosperity in your favoured country than all the speculators and reformers in the three kingdoms.
When society is arrived at a certain degree of torpid indifference and enervation of mind and body, which are the unavoidable effects of wealth, luxury, and inordinate indulgence, mankind must either be allured or shamed into action. Precepts and admonitions have no effect on them.
As they are too indolent to take the trouble either to investigate or to choose, they must be led to acts of useful benevolence as they are led in everything else—by fashion; when you shall have rendered it perfectly ridiculous for a man of fashion and fortune to have the appearance of being insensible to the most noble and most delightful of human enjoyments—that which results from doing good—you will have done more for the relief of the poor than all that the Poor Laws can ever effect. Deeply impressed with the necessity of rendering it fashionable to care for the poor and indigent, and contribute to their relief and comfort, in order to diffuse in England that spirit of active benevolence you are kindling, I am apt to insist, perhaps with too much prolixity, on that important point.
I am anxious to hear of the execution of your plan with regard to Bridewell. A well arranged House of Industry is much wanted in London. It is indeed absolutely necessary to the success of your undertaking, for there must be something to see and to touch, if I may use the expression, otherwise people in general will have but very faint, imperfect, and transitory ideas of those important and highly interesting objects with which you must make them acquainted in order to their becoming zealous converts to our new philosophy, and useful members of our community. Pray read once more the ‘Proposals,’ published in my second essay. I really think that a public establishment like that there described might easily be formed in London, and that it would produce infinite good. I will come to London to assist you in its execution whenever you will in good earnest undertake it.
The third essay was on ‘Food and Feeding the Poor; Rumford Soup and Soup-Kitchens.’ The fourth on ‘Chimney Fire-Places.’ The fifth on ‘Several Public Institutions Founded in Bavaria; on Nurseries for Genius; for Horses and for Cattle.’
During 1797 and 1798 Rumford published in England a second volume containing four essays.
These were on the ‘Management of Fire and the Economy of Fuel;’ on the ‘Propagation of Heat in Fluids,’ extending to liquids, the doctrine which he had before advanced respecting elastic fluids; on the ‘Propagation of Heat in various Substances;’ and an ‘Experimental Inquiry concerning the Source of Heat Excited by Friction.’
An account of this last essay must be given here, because from it Count Rumford derives his chief scientific reputation.