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MARQUIS OF RIPON : ADDRESS. 
years of the scientific history of this country. As it was, they knew 
very well that the ideas of the younger school had to struggle for 
acceptance, and had to fight their way not merely against the weight 
of received opinions, and the authority of great names and the force 
of accepted reasoning — they had that now, and it was quite right 
that they should have to encounter that sort of difficulty, and if 
they had truth upon their side they would encounter it successfully, 
and would overcome it — but he ventured to submit that it was not 
advisable that in addition to these necessary difficulties, which grow- 
ing ideas and new views had always to fight against, they should 
have also to contend against the all-pervading power of a Govern- 
ment department stamping opinions which were passing away with 
the imprimatur of the State, and disturbing — if he might be par- 
doned the metaphor — the impartial balances of science by the dead 
weight of State favour. (Applause.) He believed that this was not 
an imaginery danger, and he submitted the consideration to those 
who were dissatisfied with the English system in this respect. In 
all experimental branches of knowledge the first essential element 
of progress was freedom — freedom of investigation, freedom of 
discussion, the honest search for facts, the faithful report of them, 
and their unprejudiced examination. (Applause.) And if that 
was at all an accurate description of what was desirable in the 
progress of science in its physical and natural branches, then he 
ventured to claim for a society of this kind that it was calculated 
greatly to promote that end. One of their great objects, one of 
their main purposes, he took it, was to encourage individual inquiry 
— (hear, hear) — to collect facts all over the face and surface of 
this great county, to encourage men in every position and circum- 
stance of life, to help them in their business of collecting facts in 
these sciences, and to test the truth and reality of the facts so 
collected, by open and free discussion at the meetings of the society; 
and then, when they had done that, and had sifted the facts, to 
pass on those which seemed worthy of further consideration to the 
great societies of the country, and to the eminent men of science 
who were the great lights of scientific inquiry of the day, and thus 
