292 Proceedings of the British Association for 1850. 



convulsions which have so long agitated that noble but dis- 

 tracted country. — a common centre of affection, to which 

 antagonist opinions, and rival interests, and dissevered hearts, 

 have peacefully converged. It thus becomes an institution 

 of order, calculated to send back to its contending friends a 

 message of union and peace, and to replace in stable equili- 

 brium the tottering institutions of the State. It was doubt- 

 less with views like these that the great Colbert established 

 the Academy of Sciences in Paris, and that the powerful and 

 sagacious monarchs on the Continent of Europe have imi- 

 tated his example. They have established in their respective 

 capitals similar institutions, — they have sustained them with 

 liberal endowments, — they have conferred rank and honours 

 on their more eminent members, and there are now here pre- 

 sent distinguished foreigners who have well earned the 

 rewards and distinctions they have received. It is, there- 

 fore, gentlemen, no extravagant opinion that institutions 

 which have thus thriven in other countries should thrive 

 in ours, — that insulated societies, which elsewhere flourish 

 in combination, should, when combined, flourish among us, — 

 and that men ordained by the State to^ the undivided func- 

 tions of science should do more and better work than those 

 who snatch an hour or two from their daily toil, or from their 

 nightly rest. In a great nation like ours, where the higher 

 interests and objects of the State are necessarily organized, 

 it is a singular anomaly that the intellectual interests of the 

 country should, in a great measure, be left to voluntary sup- 

 port and individual zeal, — an anomaly that could have arisen 

 only from the supineness of ever-changing administrations, 

 and from the intelligence and liberality of a commercial 

 people, — an anomaly, too, that could have been continued 

 only by the excellence of the institutions they have estab- 

 lished. In the history of no civilized people can we find 

 private establishments so generously fostered, so energeti- 

 cally conducted, and so successful in their objects, as the 

 Royal Societies of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, and the 

 Astronomical, Geological, Zoological, and Linnsean Societies 

 of the metropolis. They are an honour to thd nation, and 

 will ever be gratefully remembered in the history of science. 



