162 DISSERTATION SECOND. [paiit e. 



The demand of the publick for memoirs in mathematicks 

 and natural philosophy, many of them perhaps profound 

 and difficult, is not sufficiently great to defray the expense 

 of publication, if they come forward separately and uncon- 

 nected with one another. In a collective state they are 

 much more likely to draw the attention of the publick ; the 

 form in which they appear is the most convenient both for 

 the reader and the author ; and if, after all, the sale of the 

 work is unequal to the expense, the deficiency is made up 

 from the funds of the society. An institution of this kind, 

 therefore, is a patriotick and disinterested association of 

 the lovers of science, who engage not only to employ them- 

 selves in discovery, but, by private contribution, to de- 

 fray the expense of scicntifick publications. 



The Academy of Sciences in Paris was not exactly an 

 institution of the same kind. It consisted of three classes 

 of members, one of which, the Pensionnaires, twenty in 

 number, had salaries paid by government, and were bound 

 in their turns to furnish the meetings with scientifick me- 

 moirs, and each of them also, at the beginning of every 

 year, was expected to give an account of the work in which 

 he was to be employed. This institution has been of incre- 

 dible advantage to science. To detach a number of ingeni- 

 ous men from every thing but scientifick pursuits ; to deliver 

 them alike from the embarrassments of poverty or the 

 temptations of wealth ; to give them a place and station in 

 society the most respectable and independent, is to remove 

 every impediment, and to add every stimulus to exertion. 

 To this institution, accordingly, operating upon a people 

 of great genius, and indefatigable activity of mind, we are 

 to ascribe that superiority in the mathematical sciences, 

 which, for the last seventy years, has been so conspi- 

 cuous. 



