Further minute on the same subject.—As the book has come back to me, I cannot help saying two or three words now about Mr. Pearce’s claim. I proceeded on the supposition, that there was no express contract, no bond, no papers; for this simple reason, that if there had been any such contract on paper, it is as certain as any thing in human nature can be, that Mr. Pearce would have referred to that contract. He has not referred to it. None of the gentlemen who have been longest in the Committee, who must have known of the existence of such a contract if it existed, who are most zealous for the printing of the Oriental works now in hand, has ventured to say that there is such a contract. I am entitled to take it for granted that there is none. The idea of an implied contract in such a case seems to me, as I have said, absurd. We pay for the work done, and for nothing more. As for the addition to the buildings which is stated to have been made on our account, it is certain that it was not made by our authority or with our privity. And it can therefore constitute no claim against us. I have not the smallest objection to the proposition to call for papers. I am quite sure that none will come.—[Book G. page 45.]
Macaulay’s opinion on Goldsmith’s Histories of Greece and Rome, and on Grammars of Rhetoric and Logic.—I must frankly own that I do not like the list of books. Grammars of Rhetoric and Grammars of Logic are among the most useless furniture of a shelf. Give a boy Robinson Crusoe. That is worth all the grammars of rhetoric and logic in the world. Goldsmith’s histories of Greece and Rome are miserable performances, and I do not at all like to lay out £50 on them, even after they have received all Mr. Pinnock’s improvements. The history of Greece published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge is immeasurably superior in every respect to Goldsmith’s.
I think that we need not spend £25 on fifty of Priestly’s Charts of Biography. Ten would be amply sufficient. They are not articles of which many are required. We only want to hang one up in each of our principal schools.
I must own too that I think the order for globes and other instruments unnecessarily large. To lay out £324 at once in globes alone, useful as I acknowledge those articles to be, seems exceedingly profuse, when we have only about £3000 a year for all purposes of English education. One 12-inch or 18-inch globe for each school is quite enough; and we ought not, I think, to order 16 such globes when we are about to establish only seven schools. Useful as the telescopes, the theodolites, and the other scientific instruments mentioned in the indent undoubtedly are, we must consider that four or five such in-
