During the past year the subject of local museums has been much ventilated, and as the time has now arrived when it seems a necessity to provide more room for the great national collections, we respectfully submit that it is a good and fitting opportunity to make the national collections more useful and more accessible than they now are, and I trust this splendid site may induce the Government to entertain the propositions I have the honour to submit for their consideration. 1st. From inquiries made since the meeting last May, it is found that it will be utterly and entirely impracticable for a permanent building to be erected by local efforts, or to maintain the necessary staff if a building were otherwise provided; and we feel that this could only efficiently be done by the Government as a part of one comprehensive scheme. We find it will require all our efforts to raise the funds to pay for the site, and under these circumstances we humbly submit to your Lordship that the Government should, in exchange for the site, take the whole matter into their own hands as a national affair. 2ndly. The scheme that commends itself most to our minds is, not to distribute the superfluities of the British Museum _piecemeal_ amongst several local museums, but that typical collections illustrating one branch of science should be arranged in one of several museums in different quarters of the metropolis. The British Museum would thus be relieved of its plethora without impairing the value of any one collection; for instance, the natural history collections may be kept together in one place, the ethnological in another, so that anyone requiring to study any particular branch would know to what museum to resort. In any plan of a museum that may be adopted for the improvement of the working classes, we submit that if they are to benefit by it to the fullest extent, it must be placed in a neighbourhood accessible to them, and must be open of an evening. We submit that it be made _educational in the widest sense of the word_, and that convenient and comfortable refreshment-rooms be added to the other attractions of the place. I am to request that your Lordship will be pleased to communicate your wishes in this matter, that we, on our part, may at once take the necessary means to give legal effect to this arrangement, if concurred in by your Lordship. The land being unoccupied would be available immediately the preliminary agreements were finally settled. I have, &c. (Signed) Antonio Brady, J.P., _Honorary Secretary_. To the Right Honourable Earl Granville, K.G., Lord President of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council.