Almost seventy years before the filing of the Chancery injunctions of 1820–21, a predecessor of the Duke (John, seventh Duke) had compelled Parliament—and with great reason—to enact that the ‘New Road’ should be made a broad road; not a narrow lane. He had carried a proviso for the construction of gardens in front of all the houses along the road. Were public property, and public enjoyments, protected by English law with one tenth part of the efficiency with which private property and private enjoyments are protected, that clause in the ‘New Road Act’ of 1750 would have proved, in our own present day, a measure advantageous to public health. But public easements are unknown, or nearly unknown, to English law. And the Duke’s clause has come, in course of time, to teem with public nuisance, instead of public benefit. Englishmen build at the national cost magnificent cathedrals, and then permit railway-jobbers to defile them, at pleasure, with railway ‘architecture.’ They construct, by dint of large taxation, magnificent river-embankments, and permit every sort of smoke-belching chimney and eye-killing corrugated-iron-monstrosity to spoil the view. What the old Duke of Bedford intended to make a metropolitan improvement, as well as a defence to his own property, has come to be a cause of public detriment,—simply because our legislation, in the year of Grace 1870, affords protection to no kind of public property that is insusceptible, by its nature, of direct valuation in pounds and pence.
The action of the ninth Duke of Bedford was in contrast with that of his predecessor. It was not altogether selfish, since there was an actual abatement of public enjoyment in that step which he was opposing. The Trustees of the British Museum were really compelled to take something from the Public with one hand;—but, with the other, they gave a tenfold equivalent. Their contention, of course, prevailed against the Duke’s opposition.
It may not be intrusive here to mention that it is known that by the present Duke of Bedford very generous and liberal furtherance would be given to new schemes of extension for the Museum, were Parliament, on full consideration, to think enlargement at Bloomsbury the right course to be taken in pending matters. But this subject will demand a few words hereafter.
Planta’s energies seem for several years to have been given, almost exclusively, to his Museum duties, in combination (as was perfectly practicable and befitting, under the then circumstances) with his Exchequer Paymastership. But in the closing years of his Under-Librarianship many months were (not less fitly) given to a worthy literary undertaking. He wrote his History of the Helvetic Confederacy towards the end of the last century, and published it soon after his appointment to the Principal-Librarianship. In the next year he published a supplement to it, under the title of A View of the Restoration of the Helvetic Confederacy. The History reached its second edition in 1807.
Based primarily on the great work of Johannes Von Müller, Planta’s History of the Helvetic Confederacy is both a very able production and one that is animated by a spirit of patriotism which is wise as well as strong. It was an enduring contribution to the literature of the author’s fatherland. After its appearance, his official duties mainly engrossed his attention. He died, full of years and honours, in the year 1827, leaving a son, who, like his father and his grandfather, distinguished himself in the civil service of their adopted country.
Joseph Planta, in his fifty-three years of service, had seen the British Museum pass from its infancy into the early stages of its maturity. But it still, at the time of his death, was too much regarded, both by the general Public and by Parliament, as, in the main, a place of popular amusement. His next successor saw the beginning of further improvements, such as lifted the Museum upon a level with the best of its fellow-institutions in all Europe. His second successor saw it lifted far above them, in several points of view. And what he witnessed of augmented improvement—when leaving office three or four years ago—was, in a very large measure, the result of his own zealous labours and of his eminent ability.
CHAPTER II.
INTRODUCTION TO BOOK III (Continued):—GROWTH, PROGRESS, AND INTERNAL ECONOMY, OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM, DURING THE PRINCIPAL-LIBRARIANSHIP OF SIR HENRY ELLIS.
‘It is expedient that the Trustees should revise the salaries of the Establishment, with the view of ascertaining what increase may be required for the purpose of ... obtaining the whole time and services of the ablest men, independently of any remuneration from other sources; and that, when such scale of salary shall have been fixed, it shall not be competent to any Officer of the Museum, paid thereunder, to hold any other situation conferring emolument or entailing duties.’
Report from Select Committee on British
Museum, 14 July, 1836.