THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND.LONDON, MARCH 12, 1856.
[The Corporation of the Royal Literary Fund was established in 1790, its object being to administer assistance to authors of genius and learning, who may be reduced to distress by unavoidable calamities, or deprived, by enfeebled faculties or declining life, of the power of literary exertion.At the annual general meeting held at the house of the society on the above date, the following speech was made by Mr.Charles Dickens:]
SIR, - I shall not attempt to follow my friend Mr.Bell, who, in the profession of literature, represents upon this committee a separate and distinct branch of the profession, that, like "The last rose of summer Stands blooming alone, While all its companions Are faded and gone,"into the very prickly bramble-bush with which he has ingeniously contrived to beset this question.In the remarks I have to make Ishall confine myself to four points: - 1.That the committee find themselves in the painful condition of not spending enough money, and will presently apply themselves to the great reform of spending more.2.That with regard to the house, it is a positive matter of history, that the house for which Mr.Williams was so anxious was to be applied to uses to which it never has been applied, and which the administrators of the fund decline to recognise.3.
That, in Mr.Bell's endeavours to remove the Artists' Fund from the ground of analogy it unquestionably occupies with reference to this fund, by reason of their continuing periodical relief to the same persons, I beg to tell Mr.Bell what every gentleman at that table knows - that it is the business of this fund to relieve over and over again the same people.
MR.BELL: But fresh inquiry is always made first.