Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/682

664 the Government nor the people governed could go on in simple faith on our practical aptitudes by relying on a blind and vain empiricism, like a tree severed from its roots.

The Earl of Derby.—": You have asked me to return thanks on behalf of the public services in connection with science, and Sir L. Playfair, in relation to that toast, has referred to the increased consumption of soap in this country. I have attended a good many public dinners, and I must say that the expenditure of what is vulgarly called soft soap has been great this evening. I am sincerely grateful to him for the quantity of that article which it has pleased him to expend upon me. But really the toast is one which hardly any man is competent to do justice to, and certainly not one who, like myself, has no connection with science, except a sincere admiration and respect for its professors, and whose connection with the public service has only been that of a parliamentary chief. Under our system the parliamentary head of a department is mainly concerned to keep it in harmony with the House of Commons and with the public. He has to warn the permanent officials that something that is done, or something that is left undone, or proposed to be left undone, is what public opinion will resent; and, on the other hand, he has to tell outsiders that the things they ask him and press him to do are things unwise or impossible from an administrative point of view. That is useful; it is certainly laborious, and it is often a difficult function; but it does not involve much more scientific knowledge than is implied in driving a cab through a crowded street. It does require some knowledge of men, but that is a department of study to which, as yet, no scientific formula has been found to apply. Sir L. Playfair told us, and I was sorry to hear it, of the loose connections which exist between science and the Government. I can only say that I am entirely ignorant of any such immoral transactions. But if the departments were better represented here, and if they could speak for themselves, I am sure that they would not be backward in acknowledging their obligations to science. The Treasury would tell you that those useful though sometimes ungraceful coins in which our dinner is paid for would not circulate through Europe as they do if they had not been subjected to a careful and complicated process, requiring scientific knowledge. The Excise might tell you, if they chose, of the frauds that might be perpetrated upon the revenue and the public if it were not for the careful and scientific examination of all taxable articles. The Post-Office would find no difficulty in acknowledging its obligations to Watt and to Stephenson—for where would postal revenue be without railways?—and in later days to investigators whose researches made the telegraph possible. But the fighting departments, or the spending departments, which is their more common name in Downing Street, would have the most to return thanks for. They