Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/414

380 most cases, amply reward, in a pecuniary sense, those by whom they are first employed; yet even here, what has been stated with respect to Patents, will prove that there is room for considerable amendment in our legislative enactments: but the discovery of the great principles of nature demands a mind almost exclusively devoted to such investigations; and these, in the present state of science, frequently require costly apparatus, and exact an expense of time quite incompatible with professional avocations. It becomes, therefore, a fit subject for consideration, whether it would not be politic in the state to compensate for some of those privations, to which the cultivators of the higher departments of science are exposed; and the best mode of effecting this compensation, is a question which interests both the philosopher and the statesman. Such considerations appear to have had their just influence in other countries, where the pursuit of Science is regarded as a profession, and where those who are successful in its cultivation are not shut out from almost every object of honourable ambition to which their fellow-countrymen may aspire. Having, however, already expressed some opinion upon these subjects in another publication, I shall here content myself with referring to that work.

(455.) There was, indeed, in our own country, one single position to which science, when concurring with independent fortune, might aspire, as conferring rank and station, an office deriving, in the estimation of the public, more than half its value from the commanding knowledge of its possessor; and it is