he centralization
which is hastening the decline of the Scottish universities is tending to
cause the mind of the whole youth of Scotland to be

"Cast in the mould of English universities, institutions which, from
their very completeness, exercise on second-rate minds an influence
unfavorable to originality and power of thought."--_North British
Review_, May 1853.

Their pupils are, as he says, struck "with one mental die," than which
nothing can be less favorable to literary or scientific development.

Thirty years since, Sir Humphrey Davy spoke with his countrymen as
follows:--

"There are very few persons who pursue science with true dignity; it is
followed more as connected with objects of profit than fame."--
_Consolation in Travel_.

Since then, Sir John Herschel has said to them:--

"Here whole branches of continental study are unstudied, and indeed
almost unknown by name. It is in vain to conceal the melancholy truth.
We are fast dropping behind."--_Treatise on Sound_.

A late writer, already quoted, says that learning is in disrepute. The
English people, as he informs us, have

"No longer time or patience for the luxury of a learned treatment of
their interests; and a learned lawyer or statesmen, instead of being
eagerly sought for, is shunned as an impediment to public business."
--_North British Review_.

The reviewer is, as he informs us, "far from regarding this tendency,
unfavorable as it is to present progress, as a sign of social
retrogression." He thinks that

"Reference to general principles for rules of immediate action on the
part of those actually engaged in the dispatch of business, must, from
the delay which it necessarily occasions, come to be regarded as a
worse evil than action which is at variance with principle altogether."

Demand tends to procure supply. Destroy the demand, and the supply will
cease. Science, whether natural or social, is not in demand in Great
Britain, and hence the diminution of supply. We have here the secret of
literary and scientific decline, so obvious to all who study English books
or journals, or read the speeches of English statesmen. Empiricism
prevails everywhere, and there is a universal disposition to avoid the
study of principles. The "cheap labor" system, which it is the object of
the whole British policy to establish, cannot be defended on principle,
and therefore principles are avoided. Centralization, cheap la