The real intention of the concoctors of this scheme is too evident to be concealed. They hoped, by bestowing the Order in few and rare cases on some public servants who had made exertions beyond those of their class, or sacrifices beyond necessity, to get credit for a generosity to which they are strangers, whilst the real object was to secure for their own party and supporters the largest possible share of the patronage. The advantages they promised themselves from the present arrangement were these:— 1st. By confining the Order of the Bath to officials, they limited the number of competitors. 2d. They thus limited it to a class which contained already a large proportion of their own friends and of the friends of their opponents. 3d. This plan enabled them, by putting into office their own connexions, persons perhaps of very ordinary abilities, ultimately to push them into the upper departments, and then on pretence of extraordinary service to give them these honours. 4th. It enabled them also to make way for such connexions, by tempting those above them, whether friends or opponents, to retire on the receipt of one or other of the decorations of the Bath. It is not to be denied that such rewards, fairly and judiciously given for _great_ and _extraordinary_ services, might furnish fit motives for extraordinary exertions. But if honours are to be given to every chief of an office or head of a department, after more or less service in proportion to the extent of his political interest, or to every minister we send abroad, without regard to the success of his mission; and if promotion in the Order is to depend on the time during which they have been members of it, then the Bath will no longer be the reward of great exertions or of brilliant talent, but of seniority and routine. Its crimson ribbon will thus cease to distinguish civil merit, and become the appropriate reward of _red-tape_ mediocrity. It has been suggested that a new order of knighthood should be created, for the purpose of rewarding scientific and literary merit. This plan is entirely inadmissible: there are already five Orders of English Knights, and the new Order would, as the most recent creation, be inferior in rank to those now existing. It would, therefore, necessarily fix science at a low point in the social scale. If it were adopted, the numerous members of the Order of the Bath would then look down upon and disparage the new Order; whilst, on the other hand, if great discoveries in science were admitted as claims to its honours, every member of the Order of the Bath would be interested in defending his scientific brethren.