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 n't 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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