SPEECH: NEWSPAPER PRESS FUND.--LONDON, MAY 20, 1865.



[At the second annual dinner of the Institution, held at the
Freemasons' Tavern, on Saturday, the 20th May, 1865, the following
speech was delivered by the chairman, Mr. Charles Dickens, in
proposing the toast of the evening:]

Ladies and gentlemen,--When a young child is produced after dinner
to be shown to a circle of admiring relations and friends, it may
generally be observed that their conversation--I suppose in an
instinctive remembrance of the uncertainty of infant life--takes a
retrospective turn. As how much the child has grown since the last
dinner; what a remarkably fine child it is, to have been born only
two or three years ago, how much stronger it looks now than before
it had the measles, and so forth. When a young institution is
produced after dinner, there is not the same uncertainty or
delicacy as in the case of the child, and it may be confidently
predicted of it that if it deserve to live it will surely live, and
that if it deserve to die it will surely die. The proof of desert
in such a case as this must be mainly sought, I suppose, firstly,
in what the society means to do with its money; secondly, in the
extent to which it is supported by the class with whom it
originated, and for whose benefit it is designed; and, lastly, in
the power of its hold upon the public. I add this lastly, because
no such institution that ever I heard of ever yet dreamed of
existing apart from the public, or ever yet considered it a
degradation to accept the public support.