4 FOUNDATION AND OBJECTS 



service her machinery has been exported to dis- 

 tant markets the inventions of her philosophers, 

 slighted at home, have been eagerly introduced 

 abroad her scientific institutions have been dis- 

 couraged and even abolished the articles which 

 she supplied to other States have been gradu- 

 ally manufactured by themselves ; and, one after 

 another, many of the best arts of England have 

 been transferred to other nations. . . . The 

 abolition of the Board of Longitude, the only 

 scientific board in the kingdom, at last proclaimed 

 the mortifying intelligence, that England had re- 

 nounced by Act of Parliament her patronage, even 

 of the sciences most intimately connected with her 

 naval greatness.' 



The existence of such conditions as this sombre 

 picture delineates is scarcely a matter for wonder 

 when the political and economic state of the country 

 is recalled ; but Brewster did not blame that solely 

 or even primarily. He hit out all round. He was 

 severe (in a manner that is still not unfamiliar) 

 upon our learned societies, although he admitted 

 that ' persons who are deeply occupied with their 

 own studies and affairs, cannot devote much 

 personal attention to the management of the 

 societies of which they happen to be influential 

 members ' ; but he rated the Koyal and other 

 societies for their failure to press the claims of 

 science upon the Government. He summed up the 

 position of British scientific men in the following 

 words, contrasting it with instances to the contrary 

 drawn from foreign countries, and especially from 

 France : ' There is not at this moment, within the 

 British Isles, a single philosopher, however eminent 



