Faraday to Lord Melbourne   26 October 18351

Royal Institution | 26 Octr. 1835

My Lord

The conversation with which your Lordship honored me this afternoon, including as it did your Lordship's opinion of the general character of the pensions given of late to Scientific persons2, induces me respectfully to decline the favour which I believe your Lordship intends me3; 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 it4.

I have the honor to be | My Lord | Your Lordships Most Obedient | Humble Servant | M. Faraday

To the | Right Honourable | Lord Viscount Melbourne | First Lord of the Treasury | &c &c &c &c


Endorsed by Faraday on his copy: My letter to Lord Melbourne - declining his kindness. Left by myself with my card at Lord Melbournes office on the same evening i.e on the day of our conversation | MF

1
As numbered on Faraday's copy in IEE MS SC 3.
2
The following passage is crossed through here in Faraday's copy: "agreeing also as it did with my own opinion three years ago when I heard the first announcement at Cambridge of that to Mr. Dalton". That is at the 1833 meeting of the British Association at Cambridge. See Lit.Gaz., 13 July 1833, p.433. For those who had received pensions see Parliamentary Papers, 1838 <(621)>, xxiii. For the background to such pensions see MacLeod (1970).
3
That is a pension from the Civil List. See letters 777, 780, 782, 786, 787 and also 775. According to Thompson (1898), 70 James South had written to Caroline Fox asking her to give a copy of letter 775 to Lord Holland to place before Lord Melbourne. This led to Faraday's interview with Lord Melbourne. In his diary entry for 26 April 1835, Lord Holland regrets the way men of genius like Faraday had been neglected (Kriegel (1977), 294).
4
Thompson (1898), 71 gives the following account of Faraday's interview with Lord Melbourne based on Faraday's notes of the meeting which have been lost: "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 [on this issue see Cantor (1991), 104-10]. 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".

Bibliography

KRIEGEL, Abraham D. (1977): The Holland House Diaries 1831-1840, London.

MacLEOD, Roy (1970): “Science and the Civil List 1824-1914”, Tech. Soc., 6: 47-55.

THOMPSON, Silvanus P. (1898): Michael Faraday, His Life and Work, London.

Please cite as “Faraday0825,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday0825