Neglect of Research is injuring our prosperity. 67 



Some persons, having become aware of the cosmo- 

 politan nature of scientific research, have suggested 

 that it is a matter of no importance to us as a nation 

 whether we make researches or not, as foreigners 

 would make them, and we could apply them. But no 

 honourable man would, after reflection, seriously main- 

 tain such a proposition, because it implies a willingness 

 to obtain from the labours of other persons, advantages 

 without paying for them. It is partly this absence of 

 a desire to pay for the labour of investigation, which 

 is now damaging the manufacturing and commercial 

 prosperity of this country. It is also certain that how- 

 ever much we may have hitherto succeeded commer- 

 cially, without making payment for research, we should 

 have succeeded much better had we properly assisted 

 investigators in pure science. Our success has hither- 

 to been obtained, not in consequence, but in spite of 

 the disadvantageous circumstances under which dis- 

 coverers have laboured. 



The commercial argument in favour of encouraging 

 research, although the most effective with the great 

 mass of persons, and therefore much dwelt upon in 

 this chapter, is however quite a secondary one; the en- 

 couragement of truth for the sake of its own intrinsic 

 worth, in preference to the material or extrinsic value 

 of its results, should be the foundation of all aid to 

 discovery. Justice, also, ought to come before all 

 minor considerations, and no upright man would wish 

 for a moment that anyone, and much less the greatest 

 scientific intellects in the country, should work for his 

 benefit without being remunerated. 



