Without thinking of the effect it might have upon distinguished men of science, or upon the minds of those who, stimulated to exertion, might become distinguished, I do think that a government should, _for its own sake_, honour the men who do honour and service to the country. I refer now to honours only, not to beneficial rewards. Of such honours, I think, there are none. Knighthoods and baronetcies are sometimes conferred with such intentions, but I think them utterly unfit for that purpose. Instead of conferring distinction, they confound the man who is one of twenty, or perhaps fifty, with hundreds of others. They depress rather than exalt him, for they tend to lower the especial distinction of mind to the commonplace of society. An intelligent country ought to recognise the scientific men amongst its people as a class. If honours are conferred upon eminence in any class, as that of the law or the army, they should be in this also. The aristocracy of the class should have other distinctions than those of lowly and high-born, rich and poor, yet they should be such as to be worthy of those whom the sovereign and the country should delight to honour; and, being rendered very desirable, and even enviable, in the eyes of the aristocracy by birth, should be unattainable except to that of science. Thus much, I think, the Government and the country ought to do, for their own sake and the good of science, more than for the sake of the men who might be thought worthy of such distinction. The latter have attained to their fit place, whether the community at large recognise it or not.... I have the honour to be, my lord, your very faithful servant, M. FARADAY. [Sidenote: HOW SCIENCE CAN BE HONOURED.] To Professor Andrews he wrote in 1843 in a similar strain:-- I have always felt that there is something degrading in offering rewards for intellectual exertion, and that societies or academies, or even kings and emperors, should mingle in the matter does not remove the degradation, for the feeling which is hurt is a point above their condition, and belongs to the respect which a man owes to himself.... Still, I think rewards and honours _good_ if properly distributed; but they should be given for what a man has done, and not offered for what he is to do. When a friend wrote to him on hearing a rumour that he had himself been knighted, his reply, published years after in the _London Review_, was: “I am happy that I am not a Sir, and do not intend (if it depends upon me) to become one. By the Prussian knighthood[57] I do feel honoured; in the other I should not.”