Every fifty years this reconsideration was to be
repeated, and unless there was a majority of eighteen in favour of the
retention of the statue, it was to be destroyed.
Perhaps a simpler plan would have been to forbid the erection of a statue
to any public man or woman till he or she had been dead at least one
hundred years, and even then to insist on reconsideration of the claims
of the deceased and the merit of the statue every fifty years--but the
working of the Act brought about results that on the whole were
satisfactory. For in the first place, many public statues that would
have been voted under the old system, were not ordered, when it was known
that they would be almost certainly broken up after fifty years, and in
the second, public sculptors knowing their work to be so ephemeral,
scamped it to an extent that made it offensive even to the most
uncultured eye. Hence before long subscribers took to paying the
sculptor for the statue of their dead statesmen, on condition that he did
not make it. The tribute of respect was thus paid to the deceased, the
public sculptors were not mulcted, and the rest of the public suffered no
inconvenience.
I was told, however, that an abuse of this custom is growing up, inasmuch
as the competition for the commission not to make a statue is so keen,
that sculptors have been known to return a considerable part of the
purchase money to the subscribers, by an arrangement made with them
beforehand.
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