Melbourne bot. Garden,
22/12/70.
Sir
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of yesterday,1 acquainting me that a board has been appointed to enquire into the best mode of reorganizing the Department of the botanic garden. It is deeply humiliating to me and gives me great pain, that such measure should have been adopted towards me late in life after so very many years services and the sacrifice of all my time and all my private property in the Department, and that my own professional position in the world should not be deemed sufficiently high, to advise the Government in reference to the administration of a Department, created mainly by myself, and about which I have only very recently been examined before the Civil Service Commission.
I further draw respectfully the attention of the hon. the Chief Secretary to the fact, that Mr. Josiah Mitchell is not an impartial member of the board constituted, because he has shown a hostile attitude towards me for many years past. In the Leader of the 24 Sept. of this year he assailed me so unjustly and unbecomingly in reference to the Sydney exhibition, that the Director of the botanic Garden of that city2 repelled in the same paper on the 15. Oct the attack, when again Mr Josiah Mitchell in a most unfair manner followed up the persecution of myself in the Leader of the 22 Oct. last.3
I can further prove, that Mr. Josiah Mitchell expressed himself most disrespectfully about me in a public meeting of gardeners within the last year; and furthermore I am informed, that he is connected as a writer with one of the weekly papers of Melbourne,4 which position gives him an undue public influence on the occasion of this enquiry.
I have the honor to be Sir, your obedient servant
Ferd. von Mueller,
Director botanic Garden.
The Undersecretary.5
The Chief Secretary, J. McCulloch, minuted: 'I cannot understand what humiliation there is to Dr Mueller in the appointment of a Board to enquire into the best means of reorganizing a department of the state — If Dr Mueller has given his time he has been paid by the Country for his services — And I do not know what he means by stating that he has sacrificed his prosperity in the interest of the State. With reference to the appointment of Mr Mitchell as a member of the Board I may say that I made the appointment on the representation [illegible] the high personal character given to me of Mr Mitchell, and his fitness to bring practical experience to bear on the questions submitted to the Board.’
See also W. Odgers to M, 23 December 1870, in which Odgers informed M of McCulloch's views.
Please cite as “FVM-70-12-22,” in Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, edited by R.W. Home, Thomas A. Darragh, A.M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, D.M. Sinkora†, J.H. Voigt† and Monika Wells accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/70-12-22