336 Decline of Science in England. 



and defended by foreigners? he declares in his own name that 

 Sir H. Davy, Mr Babbage, Mr Herschel, Sir James South, 

 Professor Leslie, &c. &c. who maintain the decline of science, 

 have attacked English character, and he has thus unwittingly 

 let out the whole secret of the bitterness which a certain class 

 of scientific men have evinced in the present controversy. The 

 English character here referred to, must mean the character 

 of those English philosophers who may be regarded as the re- 

 presentatives of English science, and who may be supposed 

 entitled to feel that its decliue has been owing to their indo- 

 lence or incapacity : But unfortunately for Mr Faraday's al- 

 legation, the principal representatives of English science are 

 the very persons who are here supposed to attack English cha- 

 racter, and therefore Mr Faraday must mean that Sir H. Davy, 

 Mr Babbage, &c. have attacked his scientific character, and 

 that of the other individuals, who like him maintain that 

 science has not declined in England. The question is there- 

 fore no longer one of fact but one of feeling ; and we are pre- 

 sented with the singular circumstance of the principal philoso- 

 phers of England maintaining and lamenting the decline of 

 their favourite sciences, while, generally speaking, some of the 

 philosophers of the lower class are asserting that their charac- 

 ters are attacked by the allegation, and that science was never 

 in a more prosperous and thriving condition. If this question 

 were to be submitted to the scrutiny of an English jury, we 

 have no doubt that the testimony of Mr Babbage and his sup- 

 porters would be received as that of men who sacrifice their 

 feelings of personal and national vanity in the great cause of 

 truth, while the evidence of their opponents would be rejected 

 as that of partisans, disqualified from judging of a subject in 

 which they had acknowledged their own personal characters 

 to be involved. 



From Mr Faraday's preface we now pass to the pamphlet it- 

 self, the first pages of which are occupied in expressing the 

 surprise of the author that, while it has been customary for 

 rival nations to assert their respective pre-eminence in know- 

 ledge, " a disposition entirely different is observable among 

 " some of the most scientific men of England. They appear 

 '* bent upon undervaluing their own country, and seem to 

 " take a secret, (not very secret surely,) and certainly a strange 



