Various opinions have been advanced, and are current in society, concerning the proper reward for those _whose science adds to the boundaries of human knowledge_, and certain principles are held by the occupiers of high political office, to which it may be well to advert. Some of these persons have themselves acquired a smattering of one science, political economy, and thus they reason:—They are informed that it is a highly agreeable occupation to make discoveries, and although it is known that it costs years of labour and study to acquire that power, yet it is found that many persons are willing to indulge in this luxury, and are generally disposed to publish the results of their discoveries. Since, therefore, the public can get the benefit of the knowledge for nothing, it would be very extravagant in the stewards of the public to pay anything for it. But it seems not to have been observed by these reasoners, that although all discoveries are of value to the country, yet the time at which they become practically useful occurs at very different, and often at distant periods. It might also be suggested to them, that the discoverers of the great principles of nature are very rarely the persons most capable of applying them to practice. It is also clear that the acquisition of money was not one of their objects in devoting themselves to such unprofitable pursuits. Under such circumstances, if the Government neither encourage science by pecuniary nor by honorary reward, it is most probable that the discoveries which are made, will occur in its more recondite recesses; and as the only recompense obtained is the intellectual pleasure felt in the pursuit, the greater part of the discoveries made will be of the most abstract kind. This tendency is still further increased by the fact that the far larger number of those who cultivate science, are precluded from competition by the expense necessary for the pursuit of many of its more practical branches. The most highly intellectual and exciting,—all the departments of the pure mathematics, for example, attract by the comparative economy of the expenditure they demand. And yet it may happen that immense sums might have been saved to the nation, if the efforts of competent men had been applied to reform the domestic economy or rather the domestic extravagance of many of our public establishments, instead of expending them more agreeably though less profitably, on the interpretation of an almost impossible cypher, or the still more interesting discovery of relations amongst new orders of imaginary quantities.