1876.] 
Encouragement of Scientific Research. 
477 
judges and barristers, endowed with even inconceivable 
ability and integrity, can add to our national resources or 
enable us to compete to more advantage with foreign rivals. 
Nor, if we turn from utilitarian considerations to the 
question of national honour, is the case altered. Strange 
as it may sound in some quarters, we will venture to say 
that Faraday alone has done more to raise England in the 
estimation of the civilised world than have all the most 
eminent counsel of the day. Hence we do not think that 
social arrangements which divert talent from the laboratory 
to the bar are conducive to the national welfare, or that 
their workings should be witnessed without regret. 
Summing up this part of our subject, we may safely ven- 
ture the opinion that — -regard being had to the extremely 
unfavourable circumstances prevalent — the paucity of scien- 
tific research in the United Kingdom cannot excite our 
wonder, but that there is rather room for surprise and for 
self-congratulation that under such conditions so much has 
been accomplished. But there now remains the only useful 
part of our task — to point out how these circumstances and 
conditions may be so modified that the scientific intellect of 
England may meet with fair play. Research does not at 
present “ pay.” We must, then, show how it may be made 
to pay. Flow is the much needed “ endowment of research” 
to be most satisfactorily effected ? Before coming face to 
face with this question we must first, however, dispose of a 
few misconceptions which still find a lurking-place in a cer- 
tain class of minds. Forth steps, for instance, a political 
economist, of a type very common in Chambers of Com- 
merce, and proceeds to inform us that if research is really 
valuable it “ ought to pay ” those who carry it on, and that 
if it “ does not pay ” it cannot really be valuable. Our friend 
evidently forgets that this England of ours not being quite 
Utopia, things are not always exactly as they “ ought ” to 
be. Our worthy objeCtor himself, for instance, “ ought ” 
not to adulterate his calicos with China clay, which is yet to 
be detected in them in large quantity. We are firm believers 
in the saying of Francis Bacon, that one scientific truth, 
once established, draws after it “ whole squadrons ” of utili- 
ties and practical operations. But all this does not prove 
that research, however successful, can be commercially re- 
munerative. A principle established in this century may not 
find its practical application till the next. Yet are we, on 
this account, any the less indebted to the discoverer ? A 
scientific investigator is like the first traveller in some un- 
settled land : he may note the existence of valuable mine- 
