You, my Lord, and the Speaker, have refused to concur in the appointment, and have placed my subordinate officer, Mr. Panizzi, a Foreigner, who has been here some years less than myself, over me, and at the head of our national library.
Being convinced that when the nomination to offices in the British Museum was intrusted by the country to men themselves holding high offices in the State, it was on the implied condition that they would either acquit themselves of their duty by an attention to its internal management, or abstain from active interference if they were conscious of having given no such attention. I feel that I owe it not merely to myself, but to my fellow-countrymen, to protest against your present decision, to call publicly for an inquiry into the mode in which my duty in the Museum has been performed, and into the particulars of what I have done, which may be ascertained by means of our monthly reports, and to demand for what reason a person in an inferior station has been preferred to me, in opposition to the only one of the three nominators who regularly inspects the minutes of the establishment, and is at all likely to have an intimate and accurate knowledge of its concerns, and to be capable of forming a just judgment concerning them.
In justification of Panizzi, Hallam’s opinion of his fitness for the post is given:—
You first mentioned to me, about two months since, the prospect of attaining a higher station in the Museum, in consequence of Mr. Baber’s resignation, and seemed rather desirous of testimonies to your literary and general character. The closer connection I have since had with the Museum does not, I think, make it improper for me to say what I would then readily have said had it appeared to me as requisite at that time; but you are, of course, perfectly aware that I am only to be considered as a private person, who has had frequent opportunities of seeing you in the Library. In the many conversations on literary subjects we have had together, both there and on other occasions, I have been struck with your extensive and very ready knowledge of books, which has several times been of much service to myself. Your zeal and activity in the Department are so generally acknowledged that no testimony of mine can be of much additional value, and the many private friends you possess, among whom I reckon not a few of my own, bear sufficient witness to the sincerity and integrity of your character.