speech-making going about in various directions which might be
advantageously dispensed with. If I were free to act upon this
conviction, as president for the time being of the great
institution so numerously represented here, I should immediately
and at once subside into a golden silence, which would be of a
highly edifying, because of a very exemplary character. But I
happen to be the institution’s willing servant, not its imperious
master, and it exacts tribute of mere silver or copper speech – not
to say brazen – from whomsoever it exalts to my high office. Some
African tribes – not to draw the comparison disrespectfully – some
savage African tribes, when they make a king require him perhaps to
achieve an exhausting foot-race under the stimulus of considerable
popular prodding and goading, or perhaps to be severely and
experimentally knocked about the head by his Privy Council, or
perhaps to be dipped in a river full of crocodiles, or perhaps to
drink immense quantities of something nasty out of a calabash – at
all events, to undergo some purifying ordeal in presence of his
admiring subjects.
I must confess that I became rather alarmed when I was duly warned
by your constituted authorities that whatever I might happen to say
here to-night would be termed an inaugural address on the entrance
upon a new term of study by the members of your various classes;
for, besides that, the phrase is something high-sounding for my
taste, I avow that I do look forward to that blessed time when
every man shall inaugurate his own work for himself, and do it. I
believe that we shall then have inaugurated a new era indeed, and
one in which the Lord’s Prayer will become a fulfilled prophecy
upon this earth. Remembering, however, that you may call anything
by any name without in the least changing its nature – bethinking
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myself that you may, if you be so minded, call a butterfly a
buffalo, without advancing a hair’s breadth towards making it one –
I became composed in my mind, and resolved to stick to the very
homely intention I had previously formed. This was merely to tell
you, the members, students, and friends of the Birmingham and
Midland Institute – firstly, what you cannot possibly want to know,
(this is a very popular oratorical theme); secondly, what your
institution has done; and, thirdly, what, in the poor opinion of
its President for the time being, remains for it to do and not to
do.
Now, first, as to what you cannot possibly want to know. You
cannot need from me any oratorical declamation concerning the
abstract advantages of knowledge or the beauties of selfimprovement.
If you had any such requirement you would not be
here. I conceive that you are here because you have become
thoroughly penetrated with such principles, either in your own
persons or in the persons of some striving fellow-creatures, on
whom you have looked with interest and sympathy. I conceive that
you are here because you feel the welfare of the great chiefly
adult educational establishment, whose doors stand really open to
all sorts and conditions of people, to be inseparable from the best
welfare of your great town and its neighbourhood. Nay, if I take a
much wider range than that, and say that we all – every one of us
here – perfectly well know that the benefits of such an
establishment must extend far beyond the limits of this midland
county – its fires and smoke, – and must comprehend, in some sort,
the whole community, I do not strain the truth. It was suggested
by Mr. Babbage, in his ninth “Bridgewater Treatise,” that a mere
spoken word – a single articulated syllable thrown into the air –
may go on reverberating through illimitable space for ever and for
ever, seeing that there is no rim against which it can strike – no
boundary at which it can possibly arrive. Similarly it may be said
– not as an ingenious speculation, but as a stedfast and absolute
fact – that human calculation cannot limit the influence of one