It will be useful for occasional lectures, and for exhibiting new experiments, and for the meetings of the committees.
The conversation room has been furnished, and everything has been prepared for its being used as a coffee room. It is now set apart for the daily papers.
The proprietors since June had increased 16, the life subscribers 16, and annual subscribers 122. All the new works to be done and every demand would amount to 3,900l. The balance at the banks and the debts to the Institution came to 8,100l. The Institution has been completed without any debt, and the annual income is quite sufficient to defray all the expenses of keeping it up.
He ended thus:
The Royal Institution of Great Britain may therefore be considered as finished and freely established. That it may long continue to flourish is no doubt the ardent wish of those who are connected with it, and also of all those who are acquainted with the principles on which it is founded, and who know how powerfully it must contribute to the general diffusion of an active spirit of inquiry and useful improvement among all the ranks of society.
Such was Count Rumford’s favourable statement when he was about to take leave for a time, and, as it proved, for ever, of the Institution he had founded.
The contrast between this report and that which he made to the managers only one week afterwards shows that he was very suddenly made aware of the changes which his absence would occasion in the Institution.
This, his last report, was dated May 3, and it was taken into consideration by the managers the day after he left for Bavaria. He begins by saying that at the desire of the managers he has made some inquiries and taken some preparatory steps for making several new arrangements in the internal regulation of the house of the Institution.
First, of the Journals, to relieve the managers from the care and anxiety which is ever inseparably connected with the direction of business of account, of multifarious detail, and where inspection and control are difficult and sometimes impossible. It was proposed to put the publication of the Journals into the hands of Dr. Young, Mr. Davy, and Mr. Savage, on conditions which made them take the printing-office without the power of disposing of it.
Second, of the workshops of the Royal Institution. These are proposed to be put into the hands of some respectable tradesman, to be managed by him under certain regulations at his own expense and for his own benefit. Mr. Feetham, a respectable ironmonger of Oxford Street, offered to take charge of the workshops of workers in metal,[20] which is immediately under the managers’ room, and carry on at his own expense and risk the same kinds of work with the same workmen.
Charles Royce, who, in the absence of Mr. Webster, acts as an assistant of the professor and chemical lecturer, is ready to engage to carry on the business of the model-makers’ workshops at the house of the Institution on his own account, and at his own private expense and risk, promising to furnish at fair prices to all proprietors and subscribers such models as they may order. He will likewise continue to assist Dr. Young and Mr. Davy at their public lectures.
If these arrangements are carried out, the office of Steward of the House and Master of the Workshops, held by Mr. M‘Cullock, might be suppressed. Mr. Royce will only require a boy to clean the laboratory.
Of the coffee room and dining room. It has been proposed to give the management of these to some individual who shall agree to furnish the proprietors and subscribers with refreshments at his own account and risk.
He ended his dictatorship with these abdicating words:
All the different subjects mentioned in this report remain for future discussion among the managers.
Many proofs exist that Count Rumford took little counsel from others in founding the Royal Institution.