
Sune t5, 1871] 
NATURE 
133 

field is it unpaid ; nor is it ever worth much if not paid for. It 
has hitherto been too much the custom to treat men of science 
as exceptions to all other professions ; to assume that whilst it 
_ is quite proper to enrich and ennoble soldiers who fight for pay, 
_ lawyers who evade or apply the law according to circumstances ; 
_ physicians who kill or cure as seemeth best to them ; and even 
divines, whose mission to save souls might be deemed a sufficient 
privilege : the man of science who contrives the arms with which 
the soldier wins his fortune and his coronet, who surrounds the 
lawyer, the physician, and the divine with the luxuries which 
their superior privileges enable them to command, should work 
for love, and die, as he too often does, in poverty. 
If the Council, the creation of which I now advocate, does its 
duty, it will confer benefits untold on every member of the com- 
munity, from highest to lowest ; from the military and naval ap- 
pliances necessary to protect our unequalled national wealth, 
down to the smallest and least regarded necessaries of our ordi- 
nary life, the influence of this Council will be felt ; and is it either 
just or wise to expect such benefits for nothing? . . . . 
[The author then gives some indication of the mode of consti- 
tuting the Council. ] 
IV. What objections can be alleged against the proposed Council ? 
—Difficulties innumerable can of course be conjured up in this as 
in every case of reform, but I have only heard three definite ob- 
jections raised that seem to me to deserve any notice. They 
are :— 
Ist. That this is a system of centralisation, and therefore ob- 
jectionable. 
2nd, That it will be liable to jobbery. 
3rd. That it will be too costly. 
I will touch on each of these briefly. 
As to centralisation, I admit the impeachment, but claim it as an 
advantage, not an evil. Those who are scared by centralisation 
forget that it constitutes the very basis of civilisation and of stable 
efficient government. In primitive savage life there is no centra- 
lisation, no united effort for a common purpose. Each individual 
struggles single-handed for his rights. Civilisation teaches us to 
set apart certain members of the community for purposes bene- 
ficial to the whole, to form them into distinct bodies, having 
definite duties to be executed, under the direction of a head 
central authority. The army, the navy, the police, the post- 
Office, are examples of such bodies, the animating and ruling 
law of which is centralisation. In the case of the police, we 
have local, in the other cases imperial, centralisation. The body 
we are considering will have to perform duties of a strictly im- 
perial character, contributing directly to the efficiency of the de- 
fensive power of the empire, and to the security and well-being 
of every member of the community. It is a body which not only 
would not be effective, but which could not exist but in a centra- 
lised form. 
As to the second objection, that the arrangement I have pro- 
posed would be liable to jobbery, I must own that, as I contem- 
plate the employment of human beings only, I do certainly expect 
to see the operation of human motives. But if jobbery be a fatal 
objection to the scheme, then on the same principle we ought to 
have no army, navy, church, bench, magistracy, municipalities, 
or Parliament, for in each of these the discovery of some traces 
of jobbery will probably reward a diligent scrutiny. It is not 
apparent why a degree of purity not dreamt of in regard to any 
other profession should be insisted on when science is in ques- 
tion ; nor is it clear why men of science should, @ friorz, be 
deemed more corrupt than their neighbours. Of course every 
precaution should be taken against corruption in so important a 
body, and the rest must be left to that sense of honour to be 
found in all other professions, and of which even men of science 
are perhaps not entirely devoid. 
The third objection, undue costliness, is, in my opinion, as 
invalid as the other two. My proposal has two main objects— 
to increase efficiency, and to diminish blunders: Both are in 
the strictest sense economical objects. If it does not seem cal- 
culated to attain these objects, it should on no account be 
adopted. If it gives satisfactory promise of their attainment, 
no expenditure that it is likely to occasion will be too great in 
order to secure them. Let any one who is terrified by the cost, 
visit our ports, dockyards, and arsenals, and there see the ships 
that have been built which should not have been built, the can- 
nons made that should never have existed, and the useless arms 
and equipments of the pre-scientific ages. Let him count the cost 
of these, and compare it with the probable cost of substituting for 
the reign of haphazard ignorance a reign of systematic intelli- 
gence. To take one example—that of Her Majesty’s ship 
« 

Captain. This vessel, with her armament and stores, probably 
cost the nation three or four hundred thousand pounds. Who 
shall assess in money the value of the 500 noble lives that 
perished with her? Would not the nation willingly give a 
million to have them back? If so, we have as the cost of one 
single blunder committed by one Department something like a 
million and a half of money, a sum that would go a long way to 
permanently endow a body which, had it existed a year ago, 
must have prevented that blunder. But if I dwelt on the pre- 
servation, prolongation, and increased comfort of civil life which 
such a Council would tend materially to secure, the cost of its 
maintenance would appear absolutely insignificant in comparison 
with the blessings it would shower on the nation. Against the 
cry of costliness I oppose the assertion, easily established, that 
nothing is so ruinous as disregard of the laws of nature, and no- 
thing so profitable as intelligent obedience to them. Science, 
looked at in the dryest commercial spirit, must, in the long run, 
pay. 
I must guard myself against the supposition that the proposal 
I have here advocated comprises all that is necessary for the 
efficient administration of scientific State affairs. It is only one 
part of a great system that has to be created. Other parts of 
the system will, no doubt, receive due attention from the Royal 
Commission now considering them. But there is one part so 
important that I feel called on to name it ; I mean the appoint- 
ment of a Minister of Science. He need not necessarily be ex- 
clusively devoted to science ; he might, perhaps, with advantage, 
have charge of education and the fine arts also ; but some one 
in Parliament directly representing the scientific branches of the 
national services has become absolutely indispensable. 
When we have all Scientific National Institutions under one’ 
Minister of State, advised by a permanent, independent, and 
highly qualified consultative body—when we have a similar body 
to advise the Ministers of War and Marine in strategical science 
—then the fact that, in accordance with our marvellous constitu- 
tion, these Ministers must almost necessarily be men without 
pretension to a knowledge of the affairs which they administer, 
need cause us no alarm. When these combinations have been, 
as they assuredly will be, sooner or later, effected, the wealth, 
resources, and intelligence of the nation, having due scope, Will 
render us unapproachable in the arts of peace, and unconquer- 
able in war—but not till then. 
In conclusion, I must claim for the proposal I have advocated 
that there is nothing revolutionary in its character. 
I aim at creating no new principle. We have already, as an 
integral part of our administration, a body constituted on the 
very same principle as that ncw advocated. I allude to the 
Council of India. . D 
My proposal, therefore, I maintain aims at the creation of no 
new principle,—but only at the extension of one already exist- 
ing, and universally approved after long experience. Nor do I 
aim at creating new labours. The work of which I have been 
speaking is now being done, or suppposed to be done, and it is 
paid for heavily by the nation, but it is not well done. I pro- 
pose to improve its quality by improving the agency to which it 
is assigned. I propose to substitute concentration for scattered 
effort, system for chance, organisation for disorder. I propose 
neither to exact from the Queen’s advisers new duties, nor to fix 
upon them new responsibilities. The end and aim of my pro- 
posal is to lighten their labours and anxieties by putting into 
their hands better arms than those with which they now vainly 
strive to uphold the power and glory of the nation. 
A. STRANGE 


SCIENTIFIC SERIALS 
THE last part of the S¢‘swsgsberichte of the Isis Natural History 
Society of Dresden contains the proceedings of the Society for 
the months of July, August, and September, 1870. In the sec- 
tion of Prehistoric Archzeology, Dr. Mehwald described kitchen- 
middens on Zealand and Jutland, and on the Andaman Islands, 
and stated that M. Lorange of Fredrikshald, in! Norway, has inves- 
tigated a grave in that neighbourhood which he believes to have 
been a family grave, in which the bodies were deposited one 
above the other, the one first buried being probably at a depth 
of 600 to 700 feet.—Prof. Geinitz explained Delesse’s Geological 
Map of the Department of the Seine, and remarked upon the 
occurrence in that district of the bones of extinct animals asso- 
ciated with artificial products and the remains of man. He also 
