Under these circumstances, the Commissioners very quickly came to the conclusion that the false step made in 1837 must be retraced, and the offices of Principal Librarian and Secretary amalgamated—a decision so obviously sound that it must probably have been carried into effect, even if, shortly after the close of their deliberations, Mr. Forshall’s infirmities had not rendered his retirement absolutely inevitable.
The administration of the Secretary’s Office had a strong bearing upon the questions relating to the Department of Printed Books of which the Commissioners had to take cognizance. Nothing had more strongly excited public animadversion than the delay in the preparation of the new printed Catalogue. The Trustees, as was supposed, had directed that it should be complete in print by the end of 1844. The year 1848 had now come, and it had not progressed, even in manuscript, beyond letter D. One volume, containing letter A (or part of it), had been printed in 1841, and there were no symptoms of a successor. Panizzi was able to show convincingly how contradictory were the instructions which the inexplicable carelessness of the executive department had allowed to be attributed to the Trustees. In the manuscript copy of their minute of July 13, 1839, the application of the rules of cataloguing was left to his discretion. In the copy subsequently printed by direction of the Trustees, this discretion was limited to titles already prepared. In the former he was ordered to have the Catalogue ready in press by December, 1844. In the latter he was told that it must be ready _for_ press. The latter, it would appear, was what the Trustees really intended; but no intimation of their wishes having been conveyed to Panizzi, time, labour, and money had been wasted in printing an imperfect volume, which, it now appeared, need not have been printed at all; whilst the supposed necessity for an alphabetical method of cataloguing had prevented recourse to the much more expeditious plan of taking the books shelf by shelf. It further appeared that this unfortunate minute need not necessarily have been final. An opportunity for remonstrance had been expressly reserved, but the portion of the document referring to this point having been kept from Panizzi’s knowledge, no action could be taken, so that the Trustees and their Officer were committed to an impracticable undertaking. The Commissioners determined that “any delay which could have been avoided was mainly ascribable to the desire of the Trustees to hurry on printing.”