Hutton's resignation, or rather dismissal, produced an open war in the society. The mathematicians ranged themselves on the Huttonian side; the cultivators of natural history, and the cultivators of nothing, ranged themselves on the side of the president. The mathematicians were headed by Horsley, afterwards the bishop--a man whom Lord Brougham characterizes as extremely arrogant, of violent temper, and intoxicated with an extravagant sense of his own scientific merits, which his noble biographer pronounces to be altogether insignificant, heading this charge with the unkindest cut of all, namely, that he was "a priest." Horsley was certainly no great mathematician, as his publication of the _Principia_ unluckily shows; but the picture is high coloured, which represents him as a hot-tempered, loud-tongued, bustling personage--a sort of bravo of science and theology, who took up the first opinion which occurred to him, scorned to rectify it by any after-thought, and plunged from one absurdity into another, for the sake of consistency. The eloquence of his attacks upon the chair, of whose possession he was supposed to be foolishly ambitious, was vaunted a good deal by his partisans. But, as the only evidence of his rhetoric in these squabbles ever quoted, is one sentence, it is like the pretension to wit on the strength of a single pun, and may be easily cast aside. This boasted sentence was uttered, in threatening the secession of the mathematical party. "The president will then be left with his train of feeble amateurs, and that toy (the mace) upon the table--the ghost of the Society in which Philosophy once reigned, and Newton officiated as her minister." Horsley's theology was too nearly on a par with his mathematics--he _was_ harsh and headlong. The fortunate folly of Priestley in challenging the English clergy to a trial of strength in the old arena of Unitarianism, gained him an opportunity of crushing an antagonist whose presumption was in proportion to his ignorance. Accordingly, the Unitarian was speedily put _hors-de-combat_, and Horsley was rewarded with a mitre. The president had long felt that the purpose of this violent lover of parallelograms was, to unseat him. The question was therefore brought to a decision, in the shape of a resolution "approving of Sir Joseph Banks as president, and resolving to support him in his office." This resolution was carried by 119 to 43.