Panizzi’s part in the Committee of 1835-36 was not prominent, though of considerable importance as respected his peculiar Department. The investigation, nevertheless, brought into the clearest relief the three great ideas with which he entered upon his official duties, and which, though acknowledged in principle, he was left almost alone to maintain and enforce, until they eventually became the accepted principles of the Museum, thereby occasioning a total metamorphosis in the spirit of the Institution, while its administrative constitution remained unaltered. These ideas may be thus defined:—
_I. The Museum is not a show, but an Institution for the diffusion of culture._
_II. It is a Department of the Civil Service, and should be conducted in the spirit of other public Departments._
_III. It should be managed with the utmost possible liberality._
It may not be irrelevant if we attempt to show how these points had been understood before Panizzi’s time.
In a Minute dated February 27, 1809, Sir Joseph Banks defined a Museum for exhibition as “a collection framed for the purpose of administering instruction in the form of amusement, and thus endeavouring to awake latent curiosity.” He, therefore, concluded that not only the anatomical paintings in the custody of the Trustees should be transferred to the College of Surgeons, but the Osteological Collection also. He further thought that the specimens preserved in spirits, when not capable of being stuffed, should also be transferred to the same place, more particularly as “the room where they are kept must unavoidably smell strongly of spirits,” and “they are very frequently designated by the opprobrious appellation of hobgoblins.” It was clearly the view of this representative of science upon the Board that the Museum had no business with anything unadapted for public exhibition.
With respect to the second point, it is certainly no reproach to the governing body, or the officers of the Museum, that at the period of its establishment very little work should have been required from the latter. This ensued almost as a matter of necessity from the fact that the Museum was no national foundation, planned with systematic forethought, but a mere lucky windfall. Enough was done if its safe custody was ensured; the extension it was capable of receiving entered into nobody’s mind. The inevitable consequence was that, while the standard of knowledge and accomplishments among officers of the Museum has at all times been high, the standard of official efficiency was in its first days very low. So late as 1837 an honourable and respected officer could, without conscious absurdity, urge as a plea for promotion that he would _thereby have less to do_.