Science and Citizenship 



Nevis Observatory ; and as they were in this largely 

 successful, it may be that what has been lost to the 

 British Empire by this calamitous misadventure 

 is to be preserved for science. A measure of the 

 relative weight exercised in the councils of the 

 nation by the scientific and militarist parties is 

 seen in the annual grant made by the Central 

 Government to the collective university chests of 

 Great Britain and Ireland. This grant is about 

 100,000 per annum. That is about the sum ex- 

 pended in keeping in commission for a year a 

 single first-class battleship. And if we add to this 

 an allowance for depreciation and certain necessary 

 incidental expenses, the annual cost of a first-class 

 battleship would probably reach to three times the 

 university grant, for a first-class battleship costs 

 about a million sterling to build, and is not effective 

 for much more than a decade ; and the addition 

 of each one to the fleet necessitates for its full 

 efficiency an increase of dockyard and harbour 

 accommodation, the cost of which, if it were 

 known, would probably be found to run into 

 hundreds of thousands of pounds. A final illus- 

 tration. An eminent astronomer who had spent 

 a long life alternately in the observatory and as 

 professor in the university class-rooms, recently 

 retired. That his salary had been little more than 

 the earnings of a successful artisan need be no 

 ground of reproach to the good scientist ; but the 

 rigid application of official regulations, framed for a 

 somewhat dissimilar purpose, resulted in the alloca- 

 tion of a pension which was entirely insufficient to 



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