i88o.] 
Report on Scientific Societies . 545 
For it gives that security to man in regard to the future 
welfare of his progeny which it is his highest ambition to 
achieve, and for which there is, perhaps, no other means 
equally efficacious ; inasmuch as it naturally opens out 
paths to distinction, an entrance to which others have to 
conquer, and rarely achieve with any ultimate success 
worthy the pains and struggles it has cost. Although illus- 
tration in any department is not wanting to the Upper 
House, yet eminence in science, literature, art, or even 
invention, has not been considered a sufficient claim for 
inscription upon its muster-roll, to which distinction in law, 
politics, or war, or even simple wealth, so frequently gives 
admission. In the Bill brought into Parliament, but subset 
quently dropped, by Earl Russell, concerning the creation 
of Life Peerages, the claim of scientific men to such a dis- 
tinction was admitted ; but, in common with new life peers 
in general, they were to sign, previous to their admission 
to the House, a kind of self- given testimonium paupertatis . 
Now, in regard to life peerages — the grant of hereditary 
peerage being, as an undoubted prerogative of the Crown, 
alwavs dependent on the mere will of the sovereign and his 
constitutional advisers — there appears to be a mode of 
naming, especially men of science to such a dignity, not 
liable to the objections which ultimately led to the abandon- 
ment of Earl Russell’s Bill. . Might not, indeed, new life 
peerages be based upon the principle admitted in the case of 
bishops, who now-a-days hold their peerages by Office, no 
more by land ? And might such persons, for instance, as 
the Master of the Mint (whose office has been taken from 
science in England, when, upon her example, it has become 
an appanage of science on the Continent), the Astronomer 
Royal, and even the Presidents of the Royal Society and 
British Association (who should then be elected for life, and 
by means of a conge d’elire), not be properly and regularly 
summoned to the Lords ? And instead of their being intro- 
duced, as it were, in forma pauperis to the House, would it 
be squandering the public money if each of the above-named 
persons were endowed with an annual pension amounting 
not to the salary of a judge or bishop, but to that of a junior 
lord ? 
If Science, however, is to obtain her fair share of recog- 
nition and due meed of reward from the State, men of science 
will have, as happens in the world, to exert themselves and 
prove themselves capable of holding* their own. Otherwise, 
or if philosophers — out of too noble instinCIs which the 
world does not appreciate — spurn honours and disdain 
