The officer, receiving such a reply, will naturally mention at the Council the opinions of the President. He may even from good nature allow the Council to think that the President himself _originated_ the views he only _adopted_ because he believed them to be those of the Society. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to oppose the expressed wishes of the absent President, and strangely enough, without any intentional deceit, President, Council, and Society are supposed to be unanimous in doing what each by itself thinks inexpedient. § It is true that by great kindness, good sense, and decision of character, the Prince or absent President may in some cases mitigate or prevent these evils. Such cases, however, are the exception, not the rule. § In a work containing views on the state of science in England, foreigners at least will expect that I should take some notice of my own calculating engines. I had hoped that the history of the transactions between myself and the government respecting them, as related in the eleventh chapter of the History of the Royal Society by Mr. Weld, together with the two criticisms on that work in the Athenæum,[18] would have rendered any further explanation on my part unnecessary. Many persons, however, who admit these as fully explaining the part I was compelled to take, have at the same time expressed to me their doubts that some occult agency was at work to prejudice the government, and have asked who were its scientific advisers on such an important subject, during the long period in which the Difference Engine was in abeyance. § I have not been blind to the passions and interests of men. My own pursuits were of such a character that they interfered with those of none of my colleagues in the paths of science; and perhaps I may have trusted too much to this circumstance as exempting me from rivalry and jealousy. As a reformer both in science and in politics, I knew that I should excite enmity in the minds of some honest men, and also in those of many other persons who dreaded inquiry into jobs not yet exposed. When I published the Decline of Science, in 1830, I certainly was not aware how many would include themselves in the latter class: but had I foreseen it, I should not have altered my course. To have met and to have defeated intrigue by watchfulness, might not have been a difficult task, but it would have required too great a sacrifice of time devoted to far higher objects. It was, moreover, an occupation for which I had little taste.