In reporting upon this plan, originally framed in 1858, the Committee of 1860, after comparing with it two other but only partial plans of extension and re-arrangement, prepared respectively by Mr. Sydney Smirke and by Mr. Nevil Story-Maskelyne, observe: ‘Your Committee have reason to think that if any of these plans were adopted—involving the [immediate] purchase of not more than two acres of land, with the [immediately] requisite buildings and alterations—the cost would not exceed three hundred thousand pounds. If, however, only this limited portion of land should be at once acquired, it is probable that the price of what remains would be enhanced. If the whole were to be purchased, as your Committee have already recommended, the cost above stated would be, of course, increased.’

The recommendation here referred to has been already quoted in a preceding chapter, together with a statement of the grounds on which it was based.

See Chap. III of Book III.

The only additional elucidation, on this head, which it seems necessary to give may be found in a passage of the evidence of one of the Trustees, Sir Roderick Murchison, who, in 1858, with other eminent men of science, presented a Memorial to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, praying that the British Museum might not be dismembered by any transference of the Natural History Collections to another locality. After saying: ‘I entirely coincide still in every opinion that was expressed in that Memorial, and I have since seen additional and stronger reasons for wishing that [its prayer] should be supported,’ Sir Roderick added: ‘When it was brought before us [that is, before a Sub-Committee of Trustees] in evidence, that if we were largely to extend the British Museum at once in sitû, and that as large a building were to be made in sitû as might be made at Kensington, we then learned that the expense would be greater. But I have since seen good grounds to believe that by purchasing the ground rents or the land, to north, east, or west, of the Museum, according to a plan which I believe has now been prepared and laid before the members of the Committee [referring to that of Mr. Oldfield, just described], and availing ourselves of the gradual[[49]] power of enlargement ... |Minutes of Evidence, 1860, Q. 1243–1250, pp. 102, 103.| the Nation would be put to a much less expense for several years to come, and would in the end realise all those objects which it is the aim[[50]] of men of science to obtain.’

The chief alternative plan is based on the transference of the Natural History Collections to an entirely new site, and on the devotion to the uses of the Literary and Archæological Departments of the Museum of the whole of the space so freed from the scientific departments.

Plan for the transference of the Natural History Collections to Kensington (or elsewhere). 1861–62.

The Committee of 1860 condemned this plan in the main (but only, as it seems, by a single voice upon a division), but what that Committee had under consideration was only the first form into which the plan of separation had been shaped. At the end of the year 1861 and beginning of 1862, that plan was again brought before a Sub-Committee of the Trustees, at the express instance of the Lords of Her Majesty’s Treasury, and it was thus reported upon:—

Report of Sub-Committee of Trustees, Jan., 1862.

Your Committee, to whom it has been referred to consider the best manner of carrying into effect the Treasury Minute of the thirteenth of November, 1861, and the Resolution passed at the special general meeting of the third of December of the same year, have unanimously agreed to the following report:[[51]]—

Minute of Treasury.