ADDRESS, xliij 
believe, little aware of the obstructions which oppose the progress of science 
in Scotland. In our five universities, there is not a single fellowship to stimu- 
late the genius and rouse the ambition of the student. The church, the law, 
and the medical profession hold out no rewards to the cultivators of mathe- 
matical and physical science ; and were a youthful Newton or Laplace to 
issue from any of our universities, his best friends would advise him to 
renounce the divine gift, and to seek in professional toil the well-earned 
competency which can alone secure him a just position in the social scale, 
and an enviable felicity in the domestic circle. Did this truth require any 
evidence in its support, we find it in the notorious fact, that our colleges 
cannot furnish professors to fill their own important offices; and the time is 
not distant when all our chairs in mathematics, natural philosophy, and even 
natural history, will be occupied by professors educated in the English uni- 
versities. But were a Royal Academy or Institute, like that of France, 
established on the basis of our existing institutions, and a class of resident 
members enabled to devote themselves wholly to science, the youth of 
Scotland would instantly start for the prize, and would speedily achieve 
their full share in the liberality of the state. Our universities would then 
breathe a more vital air. Our science would put forth new energies, and 
our literature might rise to the high level at which it stands in our sister 
land. 
But it is to the nation that the greatest advantages would accrue. With 
gigantic manufacturing establishments, depending for their perfection and 
success on mechanics and chemistry—with a royal and commercial marine 
almost covering the ocean—with steam-ships on every sea—with a system 
of agriculture leaning upon science as its mainstay—with a net-work of 
railways, demanding for their improvement, and for the safety of the tra- 
veller, and for the remuneration of their public-spirited projectors, the highest 
efforts of mechanical skill—the time has now arrived for summoning to the 
service of the state all the theoretical and practical wisdom of the country 
—for rousing what is dormant, combining what is insulated, and uniting in 
one great institution the living talent which is in active but undirected and 
unbefriended exercise around us. 
In thus pleading for the most important of the objects of the British As- 
sociation, I feel that I am not pleading for a cause that is hopeless. The 
_ change has not only commenced, but has made considerable progress. Our 
scientific institutions have already, to a certain extent, become national ones, 
Apartments belonging to the nation have been liberally granted to them, 
_ Royal medals have been founded, and large sums from the public purse de- 
yoted to the objects which they contemplate. The Museum of Giconomic 
Geology, indeed, is itself a complete section of a Royal Institute, giving a 
scientific position to six eminent philosophers, all of whom are distinguished 
members of the British Association: —and in every branch of science and 
literature, the liberality of the Crown has been extended to numerous indi- 
viduals, whose names would have been enrolled among the members of a 
National Institution. The cause, therefore, is so far advanced; and every 
act of liberality to eminent men, and every grant of money for scientific 
and literary purposes, is a distinct step towards its triumph. Our private 
_ institutions have in reality assumed the transition phase, and it requires only 
an electric spark from some sagacious and patriotic statesman to combine in 
_ one noble phalanx the scattered elements of our intellectual greatness, and 
_ guide to lofty achievements and glorious triumphs, the talent and genius of 
the nation, 
-~ 
rane 
