The industry of the Germans in scientific research is quite remarkable, they are availing themselves of the great fountain of knowledge to a much greater extent than ourselves, and are already beginning to reap the reward. Within the last few years they have succeeded, by means of researches, in making alizarine, the colouring principle of madder. "England produces immense quantities of benzene, the greatest part of which goes to Germany, there to be converted into aniline dyes, a considerable quantity of which goes back to England. No other country is so far advanced in the manufacture of the coal-tar colours as Germany. The quantity of alizarine manufactured by the German makers far surpasses the English production." (See "Alizarine, Natural and Artificial," by F. Versmann, New York, 1873). Statements of this kind are frequently published, and made by our manufacturers and others, of the departure of branch after branch of our manufactures to the Continent, and of continually increasing importation of foreign-made articles. {67} Some persons, having become aware of the cosmopolitan nature of scientific research, have suggested that it is a matter of no importance to us as a nation whether we make researches or not, as foreigners would make them, and we could apply them. But no honourable man would, after reflection, seriously maintain such a proposition, because it implies a willingness to obtain from the labours of other persons, advantages without paying for them. It is partly this absence of a desire to pay for the labour of investigation, which is now damaging the manufacturing and commercial prosperity of this country. It is also certain that however much we may have hitherto succeeded commercially, without making payment for research, we should have succeeded much better had we properly assisted investigators in pure science. Our success has hitherto been obtained, not in consequence, but in spite of the disadvantageous circumstances under which discoverers have laboured. The commercial argument in favour of encouraging research, although the most effective with the great mass of persons, and therefore much dwelt upon in this chapter, is however quite a secondary one; the encouragement of truth for the sake of its own intrinsic worth, in preference to the material or extrinsic value of its results, should be the foundation of all aid to discovery. Justice, also, ought to come before all minor considerations, and no upright man would wish for a moment that anyone, and much less the greatest scientific intellects in the country, should work for his benefit without being remunerated. {68}