The unconstitutional and illegal proceedings of the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society / by William Dickinson.

  • Dickinson, William
Date:
[1853]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The unconstitutional and illegal proceedings of the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society / by William Dickinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Members of the Council of the Pharmaceutical Society be denied the same privilege ? I claim for myself this privilege, and I assert it. I have law and reason on my side, and it is not your entreaties, or your threats of expulsion from the Society, which will induce me to alter my course so long as abuses remain unreformed. You will also remember that I protested against certain proposed rules as wholly illegal. My opinion on this point was supported by that of the eminent Counsel and Lawyer, Mr. Bramwell, who had advised on a Case containing the facts, fully, clearly, and fairly stated, and accompanied by a copy of the Charter, the Pharmacy Act, and the proposed Bye-laws. Mr. Bramwell’s opinion has been printed and circulated, and no person has ever yet come forward to show the fallacy of that opinion ; on the contrary, it has been confirmed by another eminent Counsel, Mr. J. H. Lloyd. And now let me observe that you, as Council of this Society, have permitted a false and slanderous statement to appear in the Journal of the Society, to the effect that the case was unfairly and incorrectly stated. [Vol. xiii. p. 146.] The Case contains a transcript of every clause and passage in the three documents mentioned, in any way affecting the questions at issue, accompanied by the documents them- selves. You allege that the Bye-laws were “ settled on competent legal authority.” [Vol. xiii. p. 146.] When the written “opinion of the com- petent legal authority” [p. 145] was publicly called for, it transpired that it was only a verbal opinion on a case stated in conversation with Mr. Tidd Pratt that was taken! If the Council think such a proceed- ing satisfactory, the members of the Society cannot. These Bye-laws, prepared by you, were brought up to the meeting of the 11th of May last, to be confirmed or rejected in their entirety ; no modification was permitted to be made, the President arbitrarily and unconstitutionally declaring to the meeting “ that the Bye-laws having been made and established by the Council, it was the business of the meeting either to reject them, or confirm and approve the same.” “ He explained that it was not competent for the meeting to initiate any new bye-law.” [Pharmaceutical Journal, vol. xii. p. 561.] At this Meeting, various useful and practical suggestions and amend- ments were offered, and, without alleging any reason for their refusal, they were wholly rejected, and the Bye-laws, as originally framed by you, were passed on the motion of one of your own body, duly seconded by another. I now record the various points laid before Lord Palmerston by the Deputation, and would ask any candid and impartial observer whether the course I, and these associated with me, have taken, can be con- strued into a “ hostile appeal to the Secretary of State,” or, as your journal describes it, a “ disgraceful exhibition of treachery and dis- cord” [vol. xiii. p. 146] or “ treacherous hostility” [p. 147]. That I should not be charged with a misstatement of what trans- pired at that meeting, and to explain what you, in your journal, have thought proper to designate as “ misrepresentations at the Home Office,” and “ an interference with the successful operation of the Pharmacy Act” [vol. xiii. p. 98], I beg to transcribe a passage from the letter of the Solicitors of the Deputation, addressed to the