Observations on the Decline of Science in England. 7 



intellectual population of England were entitled to expect from 

 him a more generous and enlightened policy. When the poli- 

 tics of D'Alembert, Condorcet, Carnot and Voltaire, were quoted 

 as arguments againt science and literature, there might be some 

 apology for an ignorant minister when he yielded to the fears of 

 his still more ignorant abettors ; but in the days of Sir Ilobert 

 Peel, such fears as these, if they existed at all, were to be found 

 only among men defective in reason, and could not even be felt 

 still less urged, as grounds of hostility to the cultivation of 

 science. The true cause of the indifference of the government 

 was this ; the ruling party in Parliament did not contain one 

 single scientific individual, or one siugle patron of science. 

 There was therefore no influential channel through which scienti- 

 fic claims could be preferred; and in proof of this we can state on 

 undoubted authority, that when application was made to °overn- 

 ment for a grant to construct a great national machine, the mi- 

 nister durst not give his consent till he had obtained the con- 

 currence and recommendation of the eminent philosopher and 

 statesman who was the leader of the opposition. But it was not 

 merely ignorance of science and of its value to a nation that was 

 the cause of this evil. Corruption and ignorance lay with their 

 mingled poison round the tendrils of the tree of knowledge. 

 The fund with which the Sovereign was entrusted for reward- 

 ing merit was all required for the purposes of parliamentary cor- 

 ruption, and the offices which men of talent could have filled 

 with honour and utility, were all reserved for the tools of faction. 

 In reply to these observations, it is usual to adduce some acts 

 of liberality and justice. Is not such a scientific and literary 

 name on the pension list? Was not L. 12,000 or L. 15,000 

 given for a mineralogical survey of Scotland ? Did not several 

 expeditions of discovery sail from our ports ? To these ques- 

 tions we answer in the affirmative : But if we were to inquire 

 into the real history of these transactions, we should find that 

 many of them were the merest jobs, though the avowed object of 

 them was praiseworthy ; while others were the tricks or ex- 

 pedients of a designing minister, to throw round his measures a 

 thin halo, sufficient to conceal from the people his own scheme of 

 personal aggrandisement. What is it to science that two me- 

 dals arc given annually by the Royal Society in the name of 



