BIRMINGHAM, SEPTEMBER 27, 1869.
[Inaugural Address on the opening of the Winter Session of the Birmingham and Midland Institute.
One who was present during the delivery of the following speech, informs the editor that "no note of any kind was referred to by Mr.
Dickens - except the Quotation from Sydney Smith.The address, evidently carefully prepared, was delivered without a single pause, in Mr.Dickens's best manner, and was a very great success."]
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, - We often hear of our common country that it is an over-populated one, that it is an over-pauperized one, that it is an over-colonizing one, and that it is an over-taxed one.
Now, I entertain, especially of late times, the heretical belief that it is an over-talked one, and that there is a deal of public 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 Ihappen 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.Ibelieve 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 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 self-improvement.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 atom of wholesome knowledge patiently acquired, modestly possessed, and faithfully used.
