〈EXPLANATION OF THAT JOB.〉
The true history of the affair was this: Being on the Council of the Royal Society in 1827, I observed in our accounts a charge of 381 l. 5 s. as paid to Mr. Murray for 500 copies of Sir Humphry Davy’s Discourses.
I asked publicly at the Council for an explanation of this item. The answer given by Dr. Young and others was—
“That the Council had agreed to purchase these volumes at that price, in order to induce Mr. Murray to print the President’s speeches.”
To this I replied that such an explanation was entirely inadmissible. I then showed that even allowing a very high price for composing, printing, and paper, if the Council had wished to print 500 copies of those Discourses they could have done it themselves for 150 l. at the outside. I could not extract a single word to elucidate this mystery, about which, however, I had my own ideas.
It appeared by the papers put into my hands that Sir Humphry Davy had applied to Mr. Murray, and had sold him the copyright of the Discourses for 500 guineas, one of the conditions being that the Royal Society should purchase of him 500 copies at the trade price.
Mr. Murray paid Sir H. Davy the 500 guineas in three bills at six, twelve, and eighteen months. These bills passed through Drummond’s (Sir H. Davy’s banker), and I have had them in my own hands for examination.
Thus it appears that Mr. Murray treated the whole affair as a matter of business, and acted in this purchase in his usual liberal manner. I have had in my hand a statement of the winding-up of that account copied from Mr. Murray’s books, and I find that he was a considerable loser by his {189} purchase. Sir H. Davy, on the other hand, contrived to transfer between three and four hundred pounds from the funds of the Royal Society into his own pocket.[35]
It was my determination to have called for an explanation of this affair at the election of our President and officers at our anniversary on the 30th November if Sir H. Davy had been again proposed as President in 1827.
[35] See “Decline of Science in England,” p. 105. 8vo. 1830.