"To crown all, you have, as it were, embodied these sentiments in a permanent and magnificent memorial of your good opinion. I can make only imperfect and inadequate efforts to thank you.
"Under all circumstances of my future life, the recollection of this day will warm my heart; and this noble expression of your kindness will awaken my gratitude to the latest moment of my existence."
Sir Humphry having sat down, and the cheering of the company subsided, the Chairman proposed the health of the illustrious Chemist, in three times three.
"Gentlemen," said Sir Humphry, "I am overpowered by these reiterated proofs of your approbation. You have overrated my merits. My success in your cause must be attributed to my having followed the path of experiment and induction discovered by philosophers who have preceded me: willingly would I divide your plaudits with other men of science, and claim much for the general glory of scientific discovery in a long course of ages.
"Gentlemen, I might dwell at some length upon the great increase of wealth and power to the country, within the last half century, by scientific invention, which never could have existed without coal-mines:—I shall refer only to the improvement in the potteries, to the steam-engine, and to the discovery of the gas lights.
"What an immense impulse has the steam-engine given to the arts and manufactures! How much has it diminished labour, and increased the real strength of the country, far beyond a mere increase of population! By giving facilities to a number of other inventions, it has produced even a moral effect in rendering capital necessary for the perfection of labour, credit essential to capital, and ingenuity and mental energy a secure and dignified species of property.
"Science, Gentlemen, is of infinitely more importance to a state than may at first sight appear possible; for no source of wealth and power can be entirely independent of it; and no class of men are so well able to appreciate its advantages as that to which I am now addressing myself. You have not only derived from it the means of raising your subterraneous wealth, but those also of rendering it available to the public.
"Science alone has made pit-coal such an instrument in the hands of the chemist and mechanic; it has made the elements of fire and water perform operations which formerly demanded human labour, and it has converted the productions of the earth into a thousand new forms of use and beauty.
"Gentlemen, allow me to observe, in conclusion, that it was in pursuing those methods of analogy and experiment, by which mystery had become science, that I was fortunately led to the invention of the Safety-lamp. The whole progress of my researches has been registered in the Transactions of the Royal Society, in papers which that illustrious body has honoured by their biennial medal;[47] in which I can conscientiously assert, that I have gratefully acknowledged even the slightest hints or offers of assistance which I have received during their composition.
"I state this, Gentlemen, not from vain-glory, but on account of certain calumnious insinuations which have arisen—not in the scientific world, for to that the whole progress of my researches is well known, but in a colliery. I must ever treat these insinuations with contempt; and after the honest indignation which has been expressed against them by the Coal-owners in general, I cannot feel any anxiety on the subject, nor should I have referred to it at all, did I not believe that the very persons amongst whom these insinuations originated, were extensively benefited by, and were constantly using the invention they would seek to disparage. I could never have expected that such persons would have engaged their respectable connexions in mean attempts to impeach the originality of a discovery, given to them in the most disinterested manner, and for which no return was required but an honest acknowledgment of the benefit, founded upon truth and justice.