T. Spencer Cobbold

“ We have received a thousand pleasures and advantages from their disinterested endeavours, and it is incumbent on us, and on every generation succeeding us, to enhance the value and reputation of this institution to the latest ages.
The grand objects of this Society are:—Mutual improvement and the investigation of truth; the development of the seeds of genius, and the detection of falsehood; the emancipation of the mind from the fetters of prejudice, and the cultivation of true friendship by social and liberal intercourse.
Such were the views and feelings of the founders of this Society ”

“ Do not be slothful because it is often argued that merit cannot always ensure a corresponding reward. The insufficiency of merit and of honest endeavours to the acquisition of fame and fortune, will doubtless give occasion to the discontented to repine and to censure the economy of human affairs; but they who are conversant in the investigation of final causes easily perceive that such a dispensation tends to perfect virtue by the exercise of patience. There are those who enter on the practice of our art totally destitute of preparatory instruction, and who make a merit of their defect. ”

“ They perceived that it was in society alone, by the mutual communication and reflection of the lights of reason and knowledge, that the intellectual as well as the moral powers of man are exalted and perfected. ”

“ During the following recess, the committee presented a petition to the Town Council, requesting, on behalf of the Society, the grant of a considerable portion of ground in the direction we have already indicated. This petition was both strongly recommended and favourably received, but was eventually declined, from what (now, indeed) fully appears to have been a just apprehension, that its admission would occasion an injurious encroachment on the Royal Infirmary, the limits of which Institution have all along been too much circumscribed. ”