As when a torrent from the hills, swoln with Saturnian showers,
Falls on the fields, bears blasted oaks and withered rosin flowers
… into the ocean’s force.
So did every man, woman and child in the city get whirled into the contest and rush into
the flood, and get carried out of their depths and find themselves very much at sea. But it was a fight.
The Battle of the Sites was only a glorious incident in the thirty years’ war that in Manchester had been steadily raging round the affair of the Royal Infirmary. And I am far from suggesting that the good individuals who were members of the Board of the Infirmary were any worse citizens than the rest of us. But such is human nature that the action of a board or committee is not the action of the individuals. A sort of lowest common moral denominator is found by consent of all, and that becomes the ruling quantity in the resultant action. When a good man makes a mistake he apologises and makes amends. Had any individual member of the Infirmary Board done some of the things that were done by him collectively, I have never doubted that when the wrong was pointed out he would have hastened to straighten things out. But a board or committee never apologises, neither does it pay the costs when judgment goes against it. Those come out of the estate.
And I wish I could believe the theory of Cardinal Newman, who solemnly tells us in his “Apologia”: “Also, besides the hosts of evil spirits, I considered there was a middle race, [Greek: daimonia]δαιμονια, neither in heaven nor in hell; partially fallen, capricious, wayward; noble or crafty, benevolent or malicious, as the case might be. These beings gave a sort of inspiration or intelligence to races, nations, and classes of
men. Hence the action of bodies politic and associations, which is often so different from that of the individuals who compose them.” It is a charming conceit, but if taken literally might lead to committees throwing all responsibilities for their delinquencies upon the little demons at their elbows. But I like to imagine and picture the scene of a board meeting with [Greek: daimonia]δαιμονια in attendance, painted in the manner of the younger Teniers, whose goblins, teasing the unhappy Dives, have cheered me since early boyhood. Certainly if there were any smaller devils taking part in Infirmary affairs, which seems a practical solution of many difficult problems, they were not wise devils—indeed, they were silly devils—and we did well to cast them out.
When the new Infirmary was building in the Oxford Road, I happened to meet Mr. Charles Hopkinson, who deserves so well of the citizens for his careful and devoted work on the Building Committee. He was admiring the rapidly rising building, and I told him that I did not see anything of those two pedestals in the front gardens.
“What two pedestals?” asked Hopkinson; “I never heard of any pedestals in the design.”