RELATIONS OF SCIEXCE TO THE PUBLIC WEAL. 47 



question, " Pourquoi la France n'apas trouve (rbommes superieurs au 

 moment du peril ? " The general answer was because France had al- 

 lowed university education to sink to a low ebb. Before the great 

 Revolution France had twenty-three autonomous universities in the 

 provinces. Napoleon desired to found one great university at Paris, 

 and he crushed out the others with the hand of a despot, and remodelled 

 the last with the instincts of a drill-sergeant. The central university 

 sank so low that in 1868 it is said that only £8,000 were spent for true 

 academic purposes. Startled by the intellectual sterility shown in the 

 war, France has made gigantic efforts to retrieve her position, and has 

 rebuilt the provincial colleges at a cost of £3,280,000, while her an- 

 nual budget for their support now reaches half a million pounds. In 

 order to open these provincial colleges to the best talent of France, 

 more than five hundred scholarships have been founded, of an annual 

 cost of £30,000. France now recognizes that it is not by the number 

 of men under arms that she can compete with her great neighbor Ger- 

 many, so she has determined to equal her in intellect. You will un- 

 derstand why it is that Germany was obliged, even if she had not been 

 willing, to spend such large sums in order to equip the university of 

 her conquered province, Alsace-Lorraine. France and Germany are 

 fully aware that science is the source of wealth and power, and that 

 the only way of advancing it is to encourage universities to make 

 researches and to spread existing knowledge through the community. 

 Other European nations are advancing on the same lines. Switzer- 

 land is a remarkable illustration of how a country can compensate 

 itself for its natural disadvantages by a scientific education of its peo- 

 ple. Switzerland contains neither coal nor the ordinary raw mate- 

 rials of industry, and is separated from other countries which might 

 supply them by mountain-barriers. Yet, by a singularly good system 

 of graded schools, and by the great technical college of Zurich, she 

 has become a prosperous manufacturing country. In Great Britain 

 we have nothing comparable to this technical college, either in magni- 

 tude or efiiciency. Belgium is reorganizing its universities, and the 

 state has freed the localities from the charge of buildings, and will in 

 future equip the universities with efiicient teaching resources out of 

 public taxation. Holland, with a population of four million, and a small 

 revenue of £9,000,000, spends £136,000 on her four universities. Con- 

 trast this liberality of foreign countries in the promotion of higher 

 instruction with the action of our own country. Scotland, like Hol- 

 land, has four universities, and is not very different from it in popu- 

 lation, but it only receives £30,000 from the state. By a special 

 clause in the Scotch Universities Bill the Government asked Parlia- 

 ment to declare that under no circumstances should the parliament- 

 ary grant be ever increased above £40,000, According to the views 

 of the British Treasury, there is a finality in science and in expanding 

 knowledge. 



