i.] ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM. 31 



ledge better when they declined all such meretricious 

 trappings. 



But it is one thing for the State to appeal to the 

 vanity and ambition which are to be found in philoso 

 phical as in other breasts, and another to offer men who 

 desire to do the hardest of work for the most modest 

 of tangible rewards, the means of making themselves 

 useful to their age and generation. And this is just 

 what the State does when it founds a public library or 

 museum, or provides the means of scientific research by 

 such grants of money as that administered by the Royal 

 Society. 



It is one thing, again, for the State to take all the 

 higher education of the nation into its own hands ; it 

 is another to stimulate and to aid, while they are yet 

 young and weak, local efforts to the same end. The 

 Midland Institute, Owens College in Manchester, the 

 newly instituted Science College in Newcastle, are all 

 noble products of local energy and munificence. But 

 the good they are doing is not local the common- 

 wealth, to its uttermost limits, shares in the benefits 

 they confer ; and I am at a loss to understand upon 

 what principle of equity the State, which admits the 

 principle of payment on results, refuses to give a fair 

 equivalent for these benefits ; or on what principle of 

 justice the State, which admits the obligation of sharing 

 the duty of primary education with a locality, denies the 

 existence of that obligation when the higher education 

 is in question. 



To sum up : If the positive advancement of the peace, 

 wealth, and the intellectual and moral development of 

 its members, are objects which the Government, as the 

 representative of the corporate authority of society, may 

 justly strive after, in fulfilment of its end the good of 

 mankind ; then it is clear that the Government may 



