Michael Faraday, His Life and Work

by Silvanus P. Thompson

Ever, my dear Ashley,
Most faithfully yours,
Robert Peel.

LORD MELBOURNE’S PARTICIPLE.

Sir James South still endeavoured to bring about the grant thus deferred, and wrote to the Hon. Caroline Fox, asking her to put the historiette of Faraday in the hands of Lord Holland, for him to lay before Melbourne. Faraday at first demurred to Sir James South’s action, but on the advice of his father-in-law, Barnard, withdrew his demurrer. Later in the year he was asked to wait on Lord Melbourne at the Treasury. He has left a diary of the events of the day, October 26th. According to these notes it appears that Faraday first had a long talk with Melbourne’s secretary, Mr. Young, about his first demurring on religious grounds to accept the pension, about his objection to savings’ banks, and the laying-up of wealth. Later in the day he had a short interview with the First Lord of the Treasury, when Lord Melbourne, utterly mistaking the nature of the man before him, inveighed roundly upon the whole system of giving pensions to scientific and literary persons, which he described as a piece of humbug. He prefixed the word “humbug” with a participle which Faraday’s notes describe as “theological.” Faraday, with an instant flash of indignation, bowed and withdrew. The same evening he left his card and the following note at the Treasury:—

To the Right Hon. Lord Viscount Melbourne, First Lord of the Treasury.

October 26.

My Lord,—The conversation with which your Lordship honoured me this afternoon, including, as it did, your Lordship’s opinion of the general character of the pensions given of late to scientific persons, induces me respectfully to decline the favour which I believe your Lordship intends for me; for I feel that I could not, with satisfaction to myself, accept at your Lordship’s hands that which, though it has the form of approbation, is of the character which your Lordship so pithily applied to it.

Faraday’s diary says:—

Did not like it much, and, on the whole, regret that friends should have placed me in the situation in which I found myself. Lord Melbourne said that “he thought there had been a great deal of humbug in the whole affair. He did not mean my affair, of course, but that of the pensions altogether.”... I begged him to understand that I had known nothing of the matter until far advanced, and, though grateful to those friends who had urged it forward, wished him to feel at perfect liberty in the affair as far as I was concerned.... In the evening I wrote and left a letter. I left it myself at ten o’clock at night, being anxious that Lord Melbourne should have it before anything further was done in the affair.

MICHAEL’S PENSION.

However, the matter did not end here. Faraday’s friends were indignant. A caustic, and probably exaggerated, account—for which Faraday disclaimed all responsibility—of the interview appeared in Fraser’s Magazine, and was copied into The Times of November 28th, with the result that, had it not been for the personal intervention of the King, the pension might have been refused. The storm, however, passed away, and the pension of £300 per annum was granted on December 24th. Years afterwards, writing to Mr. B. Bell, Faraday said, “Lord Melbourne behaved very handsomely in the matter.”