UTAH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 159 
scientific spirit? Surely, the desire to ascertain the whole 
of the facts, and then to pass an unbiased judgment upon 
them. The true scientist, secure of his data, will follow his 
intellect whithersoever it leads him. But these principles 
are reversed under the House of Commons. In what should 
be the assemblage of the best national intellect there is no 
place for intellect at all. No private member of the House 
of Commons is allowed to pass an independent judgment on 
facts, scientific or otherwise. Before the data are sub- 
mitted to him he is told what his opinion must be. If he 
can not quite make up his mind, he taps humbly at the door 
of the whip’s office and is there told what he thinks. The 
greatest of all scientific achievements is possibly the New- 
tonian principle that every portion of matter attracts every 
other portion of matter in the universe with a force pro- 
portionate to the respective masses, and inversely as the 
square of the distance. If, in normal times, the House of 
Commons were ordered by the whips of the predominant 
party to pass a resolution that Newton was wrong, and that 
“every atom of matter in the universe repels every other 
atom, conversely as the circle of the distance” (whatever 
that may mean), the members would file into the division 
lobby with their customary subservience. In normal poli- 
tical circumstances the House of Commons will pass any- 
thing, no matter how mischievous or ludicrous if it is 
ordered so to do. When the national sovereignty is in the 
hands of such an assemblage of unintellectual automatons 
as that, he who anticipates legislative sympathy with 
scientific achievement might with equal prospect of satis- 
faction hope to taste green cheese from the moon. 
Very much the same may be said of the civil servants. 
All the highest posts are filled by private “influence”. They 
go to the exprivate secretaries of ministers and to the sons, 
sons-in-law, brothers-in-law, nephews, cousins and other 
relatives of the men who are already “bosses” in the various 
departments. Talent and distinction are boycotted. Sup- 
pose the greatest of scientific discoverers—a Darwin or a 
Wallace—to be in rivalry as candidate for a high position 
in the civil service with some son-in-law of a minister or 
