1C Observations on the Decline of Science in England. 



compound for their annual payments, — and " eat their white 

 k a i t * while inventive genius has been blighted by the disfa- 

 vour of o-overnment, and all original scientific research entirely 

 extinguished. The enormous sums of money collected by so- 

 cieties and which, by a strange hyperbole, the reviewer states 

 to be fifty times greater than that distributed by the French 

 o-overnment, afford an irrefragable proof of the position main- 

 tained by Mr Babbage. They are wasted in house-rent, taxes, 

 wao-es of servants, and expensive transactions ; and it would be 

 difficult to point out any well marked instance where the funds 

 in question have been applied to promote the direct interests of 

 science or of scientific men. 



With regard to the Arctic expeditions, Mr Babbage and his 

 allies had nothing whatever to do with the consideration of them ; 

 and in asserting the scientific pre-eminence of France, no notice 

 was taken of her admirably conducted voyages of discovery. A 

 British ship of discovery may be at work in every parallel of lati- 

 tude, and yet the mathematical and physical, and even the natu- 

 ral knowledge, and the scientific arts of England, may be utterly 

 extinct. The interests of naval men would indeed be promoted ; 

 but as men of science have been carefully excluded from all such 

 expeditions, we must judge of their utility solely by their results. 

 Of these results we have often spoken in the highest terms of 

 praise ; but if we compare them with the enormous expence at 

 which they have been obtained, they sink into comparative insig- 

 nificance ; and we have no hesitation in stating, that the enormous 

 sum admitted by the reviewer to have been lavished on our nine 

 voyages of discovery, would have formed a capital for endow- 

 ing the most noble establishments for encouraging and reward- 

 ing scientific merit, and promoting the best interests of England. 

 The ministers of Great Britain never failed to distribute the 

 national treasure with a liberal hand, provided it was to be 

 spent by the Lords of the Admiralty, or the Board of Ordnance. 

 Offices, and honours, and pensions, were heaped in profusion on 

 military and naval men, as if no other kind of merit deserved 

 their notice. But it is to be hoped that these dark times are 

 gone, — that the eclipse of science is over, — that the arts of 

 peace will replace those of war, — and that a regenerated govern- 

 ment will study to foster the true interests of their country. 



