But a much graver charge attaches itself, if not to our clergy, certainly to those who have the distribution of ecclesiastical patronage. The richest Church in the world maintains that its funds are quite insufficient for the purposes of religion, and that our working clergy are ill-paid, and church accommodation insufficient. It calls therefore upon the nation to endow it with larger funds, and yet, while reluctant to sacrifice its own superfluities, it approves of its rich sinecures being given to reward,—not the professional service of its indefatigable parochial clergy, but those of its members who, having devoted the greater part of their time to scientific researches, have political or private interest enough to obtain such advancement. But this mode of rewarding merit is neither creditable to the Church nor advantageous to science. It tempts into the Church talents which some of its distinguished members maintain to be naturally of a disqualifying, if not of an antagonistic nature to the pursuits of religion; whilst, on the other hand, it makes a most unjust and arbitrary distinction amongst men of science themselves. It precludes those who cannot conscientiously subscribe to Articles, at once conflicting and incomprehensible, from the acquisition of that preferment and that position in society, which thus in many cases, must be conferred on less scrupulous, and certainly less distinguished inquirers into the works of nature. As the honorary distinctions of orders of knighthood are not usually bestowed on the clerical profession, its members generally profess to entertain a great contempt for them, and pronounce them unfit for the recognition of scientific merit. The want of an order for the reward of civil service, having been publicly commented upon, the question was at last forced upon the attention of the government. A plan was drawn up for the reformation of the Order of the Bath, and amongst the qualifications for its civil grades the word science was for the first time introduced. The draft, however, remained in the office, and the intention, if such it were, of the Tories was not followed out. On the advent of the Whigs to office, they seized upon so plausible an opportunity for gaining popularity, whilst in reality they were serving their own purposes. They proceeded to reconstruct the Order of the Bath, making two divisions, the Military and the Civil, each of which consisted of three classes.