293 



any one having competent knowledge, could easily de- 

 monstrate to be so. Such misapplications can always 

 best be corrected, when the science of a nation or a com- 

 munity has been a long time concentrated and acknow- 

 ledged; and is, of course, properly appreciated and re- 

 garded with confidence. 



But associations for the encouragement of physical 

 science in particular, are the more necessary in our coun- 

 try, from the nature of the government and character of 

 the public education. It was remarked by the Earl of 

 Chatham, previous to the war of the revolution, and when 

 the measures which produced that event were first agi- 

 tated in the English Parliament— that the Americans 



sitive in matters of right, and snuffed tyranny in every 

 breeze which crossed the Atlantic. This description 

 would answer nearly as well for us now as it did then. 

 Those who have reached the highest places in the coun- 

 cils of the nation, have with scarce an exception risen 

 from the profession of the law — a pursuit which, though 

 it imply a knowledge of literature, and some of its con- 

 comitants, does by no means encourage or tend to the 

 cultivation of physical science. Indeed it will not be 

 thought unjust in saying that lawyers are more apt than 

 any other class of men to practise upon the maxim that 

 "the proper study of mankind is man," and eschew all 

 material relations and agencies as unworthy their atten- 

 tion. This may not always be the case, but where it is 

 not, will be found to have arisen from some aptitude or 

 bias in the individual, and not from the tendency of his 

 employments. In consequence of this legal character 

 which belongs peculiarly to our statesmen — when scien- 

 tific projects are entertained by the government, it is long 

 before they are properly understood, and having no na- 

 tional academy or similar establishment, upon whose re- 

 commendation the government can rely, they become en- 

 tangled in the formalities of the departments, in the ma- 

 zes of party politics, in the jealousies of diflferent branch- 



