Palmerston.”
“The British Museum.
I protest against the advancement of Mr. Antonio Panizzi to the office of Principal Librarian of the British Museum, vacant by the retirement of Sir Henry Ellis, K.H.
1. Because the appointment, the said Antonio Panizzi being a foreigner, is an act of injustice towards English candidates; a satire on the character of the Nation; and a discouragement to the pursuit of its antiquities and literature.
2. Because as the office involves the chief “care and custody” of a National repository of objects of inestimable value, the appointment is a manifest incongruity, and a most inauspicious precedent.
3. Because the office confers the power of granting admission to the Reading-Room of the Museum, or of refusing it; and it is not fit that National favours, or the refusal thereof, should be received at foreign hands.
4. Because the said Antonio Panizzi has had the audacity to propose the dismemberment of the Museum, in opposition to the express provision of the Act of the twenty-sixth year of George II.—a provision which received the approval of more than fifty members of various scientific societies in 1847.
5. Because the said Antonio Panizzi, on account of the failure of his engagements with regard to the Catalogue of printed books, and the fictions and absurdities of the only fragment thereof hitherto published, appears to have deserved reprehension rather than promotion.
6. Because it removes the said Antonio Panizzi from an office in which, under the guidance of common sense, his erudition, energy, and activity might have been serviceable, to a station for which he appears to be unfitted by his arrogance and irritability, as patent in certain blue books, and by the notorious verbosity of his composition.
&c., &c., &c.,