Anniversary Address

Extract

In addressing the Society at an Annual Meeting from this chair for the first time, I must at once express my obligations to the Fellows for the honour they have done me, and confess my own diffidence as to their wisdom. The most gratifying honours are those to which one has no claim, and which one has no reason to expect; and therefore I can place the presidency of this Society among the most gratifying honours that have befallen me. It is not the only one that I have not deserved, but perhaps it is the most notable of them; and therefore it carries with it a special responsibility, since it must be justified, if it is to be justified at all, by its results. Of these it is too soon to speak yet. You have been very indulgent to an inexperienced President in his first year of office; you have sustained yourselves, no doubt, with the reflection that the real business of the Society was safe in the hands of very experienced officers, who would see that the republic took no harm, and that a President, after all, cannot do much mischief, provided he does not talk too much.