The President of the Royal Society is elected President of the Club. There were always more candidates for admission than vacancies, a circumstance which had some influence in leading to the formation of a new Club, in 1847, composed of eminent Fellows of the Society. The name of this new Association is "the Philosophical Club," and its object is "to promote, as much as possible, the scientific objects of the Royal Society, to facilitate intercourse between those Fellows who are actively engaged in cultivating the various branches of Natural Science, and who have contributed to its progress; to increase the attendance at the Evening Meetings, and to encourage the contribution and the discussion of papers." Nor are the dinners forgotten; the price of each not to exceed ten shillings.
The statistical portion of the Annual Statement of 1860, shows that the number of dinners for the past year amounted to 25, at which the attendance was 312 persons, 62 of whom were visitors, the average being = 12·48 each time: and the Treasurer called attention to the fact that out of the Club funds in the last twelvemonth, they had paid not less than £9. 6_s._ for soda and seltzer water; £8. 2_s._ 6_d._ for cards of invitation and postage; and £25 for visitors, that is, 8_s._ 0¾_d._ per head.
[7] See _Walks and Talks about London_, p. 246. The Mitre in Fleet-street was also the house frequented by Dr. Johnson.
This noted Club was the Tory Chocolate-house of Queen Anne's reign; the Whig Coffee-house was the St. James's, lower down, in the same street, St. James's. The party distinction is thus defined:--"A Whig will no more go to the Cocoa-tree or Ozinda's, than a Tory will be seen at the coffee-house of St. James's."
The Cocoa-tree Chocolate-house was converted into a Club, probably before 1746, when the house was the head-quarters of the Jacobite party in Parliament. It is thus referred to in the above year by Horace Walpole, in a letter to George Montagu:--"The Duke has given Brigadier Mordaunt the Pretender's coach, on condition he rode up to London in it. 'That I will, Sir,' said he; 'and drive till it stops of its own accord at the Cocoa-tree.'"
Gibbon was a member of this Club, and has left this entry, in his journal of 1762:--"Nov. 24. I dined at the Cocoa Tree with ----, who, under a great appearance of oddity, conceals more real humour, good sense, and even knowledge, than half those who laugh at him. We went thence to the play (_The Spanish Friar_); and when it was over, retired to the Cocoa-tree. That respectable body, of which I have the honour of being a member, affords every evening a sight truly English. Twenty or thirty, perhaps, of the first men in the kingdom in point of fashion and fortune supping at little tables covered with a napkin, in the middle of a coffee-room, upon a bit of cold meat, or a sandwich, and drinking a glass of punch. At present we are full of King's counsellors and lords of the bedchamber; who, having jumped into the ministry, make a very singular medley of their old principles and language with their modern ones." At this time, bribery was in full swing: it is alleged that the lowest bribe for a vote upon the Peace of Fontainebleau, was a bank-note of £200; and that the Secretary of the Treasury afterwards acknowledged £25,000 to have been thus expended in a single morning. And in 1765, on the debate in the Commons on the Regency Bill, we read in the _Chatham Correspondence_: "The Cocoa-tree have thus capacitated Her Royal Highness (the Princess of Wales) to be Regent: it is well they have not given us a King, if they have not; for many think, Lord Bute is King."