I need not go farther into explanation, and shall only say, that if it be incompatible with the generous design to suffer me to remain here for the time I had allowed myself, I will certainly comply with the wishes of my friends and go to town. Yet it must be observed that I humbly conceive and ardently hope that my presence will not be absolutely necessary. I have written to my friend Dr. Lettsom and requested him to have the kindness to be (as far as such a thing is admissible) my representative. In his judgment on the present occasion I can place every confidence. The letter describes the man. He did not like to be troubled--not even when action stood for the advancement of his own glory. As Pearson observed, “If Vaccination had been left to Jenner, it would never have come to anything.” Benjamin Travers also wrote to him at the same time urging the necessity of his presence in London, but he was put off with similar excuses and with expectations of assistance from the public purse-- Government, I have no doubt, will give due support to so just and laudable an undertaking. I am warranted in this suggestion by a long conversation I had with Mr. Abbott, Speaker of the House of Commons, who said that after the investigation of the Parliamentary Committee he thought it became a public duty to form Institutions for Gratuitous Inoculation. As Jenner was not to be had, the promoters set to work without him, and their triumph was complete when at a meeting in the London Tavern on 17th February, 1803, it was announced that his Majesty had graciously condescended to become the patron of “THE ROYAL JENNERIAN SOCIETY for the Extermination of the Smallpox:” that her Majesty had with great benignity acquiesced in the request to become patroness: that his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and their Royal Highnesses the Duke of York, the Duke of Clarence, and the Duke of Cumberland, had evinced, in a most flattering manner, their willingness to accept the office of vice-patrons: that his Grace the Duke of Bedford had consented to fill the office of president; and that many prelates, noblemen, and gentlemen of the highest rank and respectability had agreed to be vice-presidents of the Society. The approval of the Prince of Wales was conveyed in a letter of the Earl of Egremont, over which Baron, Jenner’s biographer (writing when the Prince had blossomed into George IV.), bursts into worship in capitals, as follows-- The gracious and beneficent mind of the Illustrious writer is displayed in every line; and the whole is truly characteristic of those great qualities which continue to add lustre to his still more EXALTED STATION and shed so much of real glory on his REIGN.