FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 55 



men of science, reported that State aid was required, and the 

 article in Nature supported the view. Believing that this 

 was not only injudicious, but wrong, I thought it advisable to 

 state my reasons for opposing it, and sent a rather long letter 

 to the editor. It was published on January 13, 1870, but in 

 order to counteract its supposed dangerous tendency a 

 leading article accompanied it, headed, " Government Aid 

 to Science," strongly controverting my views, somewhat mis- 

 representing them, and omitting to deal with the main ethical 

 question which I raised. As my letter is buried in the first 

 volume of a periodical which few of my readers will possess, 

 and as I hold the same views still, and consider their advocacy 

 to be now more important than ever, I here reproduce my 

 letter. 



a 



Government Aid to Science 



" The public mind seems now to be going wild on the 

 subject of education ; the Government is obliged to give way 

 to the clamour, and men of science seem inclined to seize the 

 opportunity to get, if possible, some share of the public 

 money. Art education is already to a considerable extent 

 supplied by the State, technical education (which I presume 

 means education in ' the arts '), is vigorously pressed upon the 

 Government, and science also is now urging her claims to a 

 modicum of State patronage and support. 



" Now, I protest most earnestly against the application of 

 public money to any of the above-specified purposes, as being 

 radically vicious in principle, and as being, in the present state 

 of society, a positive wrong. In order to clear the ground, let 

 me state that, for the purpose of the present argument, I 

 admit the right and duty of the State to educate its citizens. 

 I uphold national, but I object absolutely to all sectional or 

 class education; and all the above-named schemes are simply 

 forms of class education. The broad principle I go upon is 

 this — that the State has no moral right to apply funds raised 

 by the taxation of all its members to any purpose which is 

 not directly available for the benefit of all. As it has no 

 right to give class preferences in legislation, so it has no right 



