“Rich. Row, Clerk to the Academy.
“To H. O’Brien, Esq.”
(No. 4.)
“London, April 18, 1833.
“Sir,—Had I a notion that the Academy’s reply would be such as your letter has this day imparted, I would never have sat down to indite those additions, much less have forwarded them for their perusal. For why did I write to the Secretary three weeks ago, but to ascertain whether or not, in the event of my doing so and so, would the Academy act so and so, and thus repair that injury which they had before inflicted? What could be more easy than to give me a categorical answer, one way or the other? Instead of which, however, they left me to my own conclusions, which, as usual in such circumstances, leading me to construe silence into acquiescence, I transmitted my documents on the tacit faith that though the Academy would not pledge themselves by a written promise, they would, notwithstanding, if my researches proved adequate, reward my industry by a suitable remuneration.
“Now, however, when my papers have been received, and my developments communicated, I am told that, be their merits what they may, the award is irrevocable; and I have no alternative, in the writhings of my mortification, but the consolation of being injured and duped at the same time.
“You will say, perhaps, that my new evidences have not yet been read, and that therefore my property is secure and sacred. But has not the accompanying letter been read? And what was that but a programme of their contents?
“I had thought that the Royal Irish Academy were not only a learned, but a just and a patriotic Society. I had thought that having marshalled themselves into an institution, with the avowed object of resuscitating from death the almost despaired-of evidences of our national history, they would not alone foster every advance toward that desirable consummation, but shower honours, and acclamations, and triumphs upon him who has not only infused a vital soul into those moribund remains, but made the history of Ireland, at this moment, the clearest, the most irrefragable, and withal the most interestingly comprehensive chain of demonstrational proofs in the whole circle of universal literature.[34]
“But it is not alone the being deprived of my reward that I complain of, and the transferring of that reward to another, every sentiment of whose production must inevitably be wrong, but it is the suppression of my labours, and the keeping them back from the public eye, in deference to my opponent’s work, lest that the discernment of the public should bestow upon me those honours which the discretion of the Academy has thought proper to alienate, that affects me as most severe.