DIFFICULTY OF FILLING A SCIENTIFIC ORDER. 419 
connection, joined to the qualifications of per- 
sonal courage or legal knowledge, are at this 
moment as much entitled to be made knights of 
the established orders of merit, as most of those 
individuals who have actually been so honoured. 
No one will deny this, because it has tacitly 
been admitted in parliament. With science, how- 
ever, the case is totally different. Instead of such 
a superabundance of qualified individuals for filling 
up a scientific order, the real fact would turn out to 
be, that if high excellency was alone regarded, 
government would find great difficulty in filling up 
the ranks. Instead of being embarrassed where to 
decide in the multiplicity of equal claims, they 
would be perplexed in finding men sufficiently well 
qualified; and if they limited the number of the 
order even to fifty, they must of necessity admit 
many who now occupy only a second or a third 
station in the ranks of philosophy. This objection 
is, therefore, a peculiarly unhappy one, since the 
danger to be feared is, not the difficulty of selecting, 
but the difficulty of finding. Every one, at all 
acquainted with the subject, and with that de- 
_ scription of excellency which is possessed by titled 
philosophers upon the Continent, is fully aware of 
the paucity of such scientific attainments in Britain. 
And even common observation will show that the 
numbers among us, who pursue the higher walks of 
science, “ are very few, and probably will long con- 
tinue so.” 
(288.) We fully agree, indeed, with the right ho- 
nourable member from whom these objections have 
originated, in the justness of his remark that “some 
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