292 Notices respecting Ne-j:) Books. 



ther the well-intended attempt of the founders of those funds to 

 encourage the publication of valuable books has not been indirectly 

 the cause of much injury to science, by shutting out from the contest 

 all but a privileged body of competitors. It is like a statesman who 

 shall offer a bounty to one manufacturer and refuse it to another : it 

 is easy to see the consequences of the latter, and draw the parallel 

 between the two cases. And its ill effect has been greatly aggra- 

 vated by the enormous tax on paper, from which the University en- 

 dowed presses enjoy an exclusive exemption, and the duty on adver- 

 tisements, by means of which alone, an unknown or unpatronized 

 author can bring his works before the public. We are led to make this 

 remark by the following strain of just complaint in which the talented 

 author, whose work has formed the subject of the preceding remarks, 

 concludes his Preface, and with which we shall conclude our present 

 notice. 



" I am not, however, so sanguine as to look for much public en- 

 couragement of my labours, however successfully they may have been 

 devoted : it is not customary to place much value, in this country, 

 upon any mathematical production, of whatever merit, that does not 

 emanate from Cambridge. The hereditary reputation enjoyed by 

 this University, and bequeathed to it by the genius of Barrow, of 

 Newton, and of Cotes, seems to have endowed it with such strong 

 claims on the public attention and respect, that everything it puts 

 forth is always received as the best of its kind. If this be the case 

 with Cambridge books, of course it is also the case with Cambridge 

 men, and accordingly we find almost all our public mathematical si- 

 tuations filled by members of this University. It is true that now 

 and then, in the course of half a century, we find an exception to 

 this ; one or two instances on record have undoubtedly occurred, 

 where it has been, by some means or other, discovered that men who 

 had never seen Cambridge knew a little of mathematics, as in the 

 case of Thomas Simpson, and of Dr. Hutton ; but such instances are 

 rare. It is not for me to inquire into the justice of this exclusive sy- 

 stem ; but, while such a system prevails, there need be little wonder 

 at the decline of science in England : while all inducement to culti- 

 vate science is thus confined to a particular set of men, no wonder 

 that its votaries are few. It is to be hoped, however, that in the pre- 

 sent 'liberal and enlightened age,' such a state of things will not 

 long continue, and that even the poor and unfriended student maybe 

 cheered up, amidst all the obstacles that surround him, in the labo- 

 rious and difficult, but sublime and elevating career on which he has 

 entered, by a well-founded assurance that his exertions, if successful, 



risk of printing is removed ; and those who write with a view to publish are 

 at once stimulated by the laudable desire of fame, and animated by the hope 

 of a fair and honourable recompense for their labour in the sale of their 

 productions. In other places, mathematicians may be equalli/ successful in 

 their attainments, and authors of treatises as worthy of public attention ; but a 

 wish to jirescnt them to the world is checked by the deterring consideration of 

 an immediate and serious expense, and an uncertain and slow indemnification^ 

 — Reply to a Monthly and Critical Reviewer, p. 39. 



will 



