It is frequently chosen as an introduction to public life. It also presents great advantages, from its being a qualification for many situations more or less remotely connected with it, as well as from the circumstance that several of the highest officers of the state must necessarily have sprung from its ranks.
A powerful attraction exists, therefore, to the promotion of a study and of duties of all others engrossing the time most completely, and which is less benefited than most others by any acquaintance with science. This is one amongst the causes why it so very rarely happens that men in public situations are at all conversant even with the commonest branches of scientific knowledge, and why scarcely an instance can be cited of such persons acquiring a reputation by any discoveries of their own.
But, however consistent other sciences may be with professional avocations, there is one which, from its extreme difficulty, and the overwhelming attention which it demands, can only be pursued with success by those whose leisure is undisturbed by other claims. To be well acquainted with the present state of mathematics is no easy task; but to add to the powers which that science possesses is likely to be the lot of but few English philosophers.
The little encouragement which at all previous periods has been afforded by the English Government to the authors of useful discoveries, or of new and valuable inventions, is justified on the following grounds:
1. The public, who consume the new commodity or profit by the new invention, are much better judges of its merit than the government can be.
2. The reward which arises from the sale of the commodity is usually much larger than that which government would be justified in bestowing; and it is exactly proportioned to the consumption, that is, to the want which the public feel for the new article.
It must be admitted that, as general principles, these are correct: there are, however, exceptions which flow necessarily from the very reasoning from which they were deduced.
