47o 
Encouragement of Scientific Research. [October, 
On the other hand, is there in France or Germany a single 
professorial chair — other than of the English language and 
literature — or any similar position held by a British subject? 
In India and the Colonies the case is very similar to what it 
is in the home kingdoms. Now these phenomena are not 
without cause. We make all due allowance for that decay 
of national feeling, that morbid cosmopolitanism, which, on 
the principle that “ extremes meet,” is generally the out- 
come of the most intense personal selfishness, and which 
has been so blatantly preached and so widely practised in 
England ; we know, too, that it flatters the pride of many a 
nouveau riche amongst us to be able to inform his friends 
that he has German or French chemists in the laboratory of 
his works, and Italian artists in his designing-room. We 
are aware that in an unorganised profession like that of 
chemistry many a stranger, who could not otherwise obtain 
a foot-hold, contrives to enter by underbidding his native 
competitors, or even by the unprofessional stratagem of giving 
his services for a year gratuitously. Nor — low be it spoken! 
— do we forget that foreign men of science in this country 
have enjoyed the benefit of exalted patronage. But when 
all due weight is given to these various considerations we 
fear the faCt remains that French and German men of science 
are able to take root in this country because they, in many 
cases, bring to their tasks a more thorough training than do 
their English rivals. This consideration is to us a very 
“ handwriting on the wall.” Is this nation to live, like the 
dogs, on the intellectual crumbs that fall from the tables of 
France and Germany ? Are we to commit the higher edu- 
cation of our youth, the supervision of the most delicate 
processes in our manufactures, and the conception and intro- 
duction of improvements to aliens, and to allow our own 
people to subside into the condition of hewers of wood and 
drawers of water ? Is it of any avail that a certain abstract 
England shall grow more and more rich and prosperous, if 
it is to be by the degradation of the English people ? Can 
we hope for any length of time to compete with rival nations 
if we have to borrow from them the intelligence needed to 
carry on our operations ? Alien inventors and managers are 
in these days no less dangerous than mercenary troops, and 
if we are content to hire talent from abroad instead of culti- 
vating it at home we are surely’preparing our own downfall. 
Need we recall the faCt that the Norman Conquest had been 
prepared during the reign of Edward the Confessor, by an 
influx of Norman ecclesiastics, Norman courtiers, and even 
Norman artizans ? Are there not certain phenomena in our 
day far too closely analogous ? 
