552 Report on Scientific Societies . [September, 
reigning in England, notwithstanding its abuses, is a far 
more valuable safeguard for Science, the very life of which 
is progress. Now, if the Royal Society, transformed into 
or superseded by an academy, were to arrogate to itself 
that kind of domination which the Academie des Sciences 
exercises in France, or if the English Universities en- 
deavoured to absorb all the intellectual life of the nation, 
or to fashion it in their own way, as is the case in 
Germany, the superiority of England which has made it 
the head-quarters of scientific progress, and the mother 
country of so many amateurs more distinguished in Science 
than most French academicians or German professors, would 
probably be gone. 
These are the reasons which induced me to express in 
my last letter the hope that liberty and self-government 
may be preserved to science in England, henceforth as 
heretofore ; and to deprecate, as intimately connected with 
the subject, the creation of a special department, or the 
appointment of a new minister for science or instruction, 
or, as it is sometimes significantly called, for education — 
tending towards State centralisation. It is altogether erro- 
neous to suppose, as I could prove it, that Government 
supervision on the Continent has been in any way whatever 
to the advantage of Science. It would have been so if 
scientific institutions in Germany or France were better 
organised than in England ; if there were a proper division 
of labour between them ; and if each had its distinct 
special object. Without entering into any examination of 
fadls,T will merely state — what must be evident to anyone 
who has studied the subject— that nothing, on the contrary, 
can exceed the confusion of the multiple scientific esta- 
blishments at Paris, for instance, involving the frequent 
abuse called in French double emploi — while the want of 
any real organisation in the higher branches of instruction, 
or the scientific institutions, is shown by the existence of 
the so-called cumul. The former defeCt implies the exist- 
ence of several posts for the same thing or subject, and 
generally also the absence of a proper care for others; 
while the latter means the union of several offices, 
laboratories, &c., in the hands of one man, to the detri- 
ment of others who have none. The unsatisfactory state 
of science in France, the head-quarters of centralisation, 
has been frequently acknowledged of late by the very 
highest authorities of the country. It has led to the crea- 
tion of a special establishment, as yet very imperfectly 
developed and not irreproachably planned, destined to 
