Photography and Stereoscopic Vision-Electrotype, &c. 257 valuable applications, we owe to Mr. Fox Talbot and MM. Niepce and Daguerre. We all know its value in portraiture and in landscape delineation, and its vast importance as an auxiliary to art; but we seldom think of its great national value. We do not allude to its employment in the discovery of criminals, and many other matters in which the State has an interest, but to the thousands of individuals to whom it has given employment, and to its large contributions to the national income. We have no means of ascertaining the number of persons in England whom it professionally employs; but we may form a rude estimate from the fact that above fifteen thousand persons are engaged in Paris in the manufacture of lenticular stereoscopes and binocular pictures. In nations with an increasing population every invention, however small, has a national value, employing idle hands and taxed materials; and foreign statesmen have been liberal in encouraging and rewarding them. France gave an annual pension of 8331. to the inventors of the Daguerreotype, and made the art a present to the nation, and even to the world. The more important invention of Mr. Fox Talbot was never acknowledged by the State, and we are ashamed to say, that, by an unjust decision, an English judge and jury deprived him of his patent right. Our allotted space will not allow us to dwell upon the Electrotype, an English invention, and one of the most elegant and valuable of the useful arts. It has received an unlooked-for application in the photo-galvanographic process of Mr. Paul Pretsch, in which he obtains, from a photographic impression in gelatine, a gutta-percha cast, upon which, when metallised, he deposits galvanically a plate of copper, from which thousands of impressions may be taken. For the same reason we can only mention the great improvements which agriculture has received from the discoveries of Liebig and the labours of Dr. Lyon Playfair; the noble application of chloroform in surgery and midwifery, which we owe to Professor Simpson; and the electric light, which we have no doubt will, for certain kinds of illumination, be universally employed. Such is a brief, and, we trust, not an exaggerated view of the social condition and claims of science. That some reform is necessary, and must sooner or later be made, can hardly be doubted. Men of science and inventive genius are but little fitted to influence the public mind, and still less to take the legislature by storm. The Parliamentary Committee of Lord Wrot * Mr. Grove, himself an eminent discoverer, very justly remarks, 'that scientific men have but very limited means of acting upon Government. They are politicians in a less degree than any class of her Majesty's subjects. They consist of men belonging to various classes of society, and whose ordinary occupations differ greatly. Most of the great measures of reform in progress which tesley tesley obviously failed from its too gentle appeal to the State. They forgot that the minister has the hide of the rhinoceros, and must be probed to the quick before he can be chafed into sensation. It is the Press of England alone, with its intellectual power and indomitable independence, that can impress the national mind and conquer the liberality of the crown. We invite it to the struggle under its able leaders. The Times' has already pronounced a stern judgment on the condition of our science and literature, and the Examiner' has been equally bold in denouncing the unjust distribution of the honours of the state. In the preceding pages we have attempted to enumerate some of the more important services which science has rendered to the State. As lovers of peace we have hesitated to speak of its great value in offensive and defensive war. It is science, however, which teaches the iron shell to discharge its fatal contents; which speeds the rocket on its incendiary mission; and which guides the rifle-ball to the seat of life. It is science which constructs and impels our floating bulwarks; which places its lanthorns beside the Scyllas and Charybdises of the deep; and which teaches us to predict and evade the hurricane and the storm. Disastrous campaigns call out for wisdom in our councils, and science in our fleets and armies; and if England shall be compelled again to send her brave legions to a distant battle-field, or even to defend her island hearths against foreign invasion, she must enlist in her service, and dignify with her honours, the theoretical and practical science of the philosopher and the engineer. But it is on grounds higher than utilitarian that we would plead for the national endowment of science. The fame of England, the interests of civilisation, and equal justice to every class of the nation's servants demand it from the State. Even when science had few useful applications, the sage occupied a higher place than the hero and the lawgiver; and history has preserved his name when theirs have disappeared from its page. Archimedes lives in the memory of thousands who have forgotten the tyrants of Syracuse, and the Roman consul who subdued it; and Newton's glory will throw a lustre over the name of England when time has paled the light reflected from her warriors. The renown of military achievements appeals but to the country which they benefit and adorn: it lives but in the obelisk of granite: it illuminates but the vernacular page. Subjugated nations turn from the monument that have been effected in this country result from a strong pressure of public opinion, urged on by agitation; and as men of science are peculiarly unfitted for this process, Government might not unreasonably be asked to step out of its usual habits and to lend science a helping hand.'-Report of Parliamentary Committee,' p. liv. * See page 240, Note. degrades degrades them, and the vanquished warrior spurns the record of his humiliation or his shame. Even the traveller makes a deduction from military glory when he surveys the red track of war; and the tears of the widow and the orphan obliterate the inscription that is written in blood. How different are our associations with the tablet of marble which emblazons the deeds of the philanthropist and the sage! No trophies of war are hung in their temple. The cry of suffering humanity never mingles with their anthem; and ignorance and crime are alone yoked to their triumphal car. But if the statesman be insensible to his country's fame, and to the interests of humanity, he is bound, by a sense of justice, to place the genius of knowledge on the same level with that of legislation and war. If the inventor adds to the national resources, strengthens the national defences, and saves the national life, is he not entitled to the same protection as he who speaks or fights in the nation's cause? If the minister sensitively appreciates in military adventure a higher risk of life, and a nobler self-devotion, may we not urge an equal claim in behalf of the philosopher? Are there no personal risks in his acts of voluntary service? Has science no strongholds to storm-no nightly bivouac to endureno casualties in her bills of mortality? Do her rank and file exhibit no emaciated frames-no overwrought and distracted minds-no scanty commissariat--no widows and orphans? Believing that in the lifelong campaign in which the philosopher has to serve, there are more acts of self-devotion than in the soldier's briefer service, we make our final appeal to the legislature-to some commoner within its halls-some Burke or Sheridan to plead with burning eloquence the cause of the order they adorn, -to some senator whose industry or talents have raised him to the peerage, to demand for his fellows a portion of that which he has himself obtained. If our legislators are silent, we appeal to that illustrious prince, who, from his love of science, and acquaintance with foreign institutions, cannot fail to believe that England will never do justice to her benefactors, nor take her due place among civilised nations, till she has endowed a National Institute with its three Academies of Science, Literature, and the Arts. ART. V.-1. Essay on the means of eradicating the prejudices of the Whites against the Negroes and Coloured People-to which a prize was adjudged by the French Society for abolishing Slavery. By S. Linstant (of Haiti). Paris. 8vo. 1841. 2. Collection of the Laws and Proceedings of the Government of Haiti, from the Declaration of its Independence to the present day. day. Made and published by S. Linstant (of Haiti), Member of the Imperial Bar at Port au Prince, and of the Chamber of Representatives. Formerly Secretary to the Minister of Justice, of Public Instruction, and of Worship. Vol. I. 1804-1808. Paris. 8vo. 1851. Pp. 319. 3. Essay upon Emigration to Haiti. By M. Linstant. Paris. 8vo. 1850. 4. Translation of the Prize Essay against the Prejudices of Colour. By Baron Linstant de Pradine, Chargé d'Affaires from the Emperor of Haiti to the Court of London. London. 8vo. 1858. EVER VERY question concerning Africa and its people is rapidly assuming a new character; and the various zealous labours of the last half-century in favour of its civilisation are producing their fruit in our perfect comprehension of the means proper to promote its welfare and improvement. Speculation upon the capacity of the negro, and upon the resources of his country, has become conviction; and ere long the great nations of the civilised world will deal with him as they deal with each other, and as they are bound to deal with every nation and tribe upon earth, according to settled rules of international law and justice. This enlarges the sphere of African relations with the rest of mankind by making the negro what he really is, a common member of the great family of man; and it narrows the sphere of our agency towards him by bringing it within the acknowledged rules of duty from all men to their fellows. This position of the question gets rid of much difficulty, and, above all, sets aside the absurd and insolent imputation, often brought by shallow pretenders to enlightened views of things, that philanthropy is only the maundering sentimentality of weak people;' and it elevates that glorious work of Christianity to what it is justly to be termed a work of true statesmanship. Therefore in examining the present prospects of the negro race, and their real genius or capabilities, it will be indispensable chiefly to ascertain what is doing at this moment in regard to that race by the civilised states most extensively connected with them, and especially what our own Government and people are doing in respect to that connection. After more than two hundred years' use of the slave trade, we gave it up; and the emancipation of our colonial slaves-a fit accompaniment of the first measure-slowly followed. The analogous claims of free colonial tribes of our fellow-creatures upon our ustice had never been entirely neglected; and seeing that we have been able to moderate the sufferings of enslaved Africans beyond sea, the time assuredly is come thoroughly to respect their The Author's Position Defined. 261 rights at home, and to determine how the due appreciation of their moral and political capabilities shall raise them high in the scale of humanity. The end is worthy of all the means at the command of reasonable men who, in their past philanthropic successes, can find encouragement towards greater efforts, and who will thus be prompted to resume with vigour the duty of protecting the oppressed when new occasions arise for the revival of our old regard for them. Hence the general and strong sympathy in the recent African discoveries of Livingstone and Barth, although, with all their merit, their works are but lively repetitions of those of our Mungo Parks and Clappertons, and of the other famous men of a former generation. But the present revival of our old interests in Africa is in all respects opportune. A careful and candid review of the history of the negro race during the last thirty or forty years completely removes the veil that has covered that continent for ages in impenetrable mystery; and a vast field is opened for the application of the best means recommended by experience for securing our just and benevolent objects. By the negro race is here meant coloured men in Africa, and of African origin, of all hues and configurations, from the tribes of Sennaar in the east, and of Senegal in the west, to the central Kroomen and Ashantees and Mozambiques-from the people of the Niger to those of the Congo and Zambese, to the Bechuanas, the Zoolas, the Basootus, the Cape Caffres, and the Hottentots of the extreme south. To all these must be added the coloured people of Madagascar and of the other African islands, with the descendants of Africans in North and South America and the West Indies. Various in their languages, their features, and the shades of their skins, they offer plain common characteristics. They are all exposed to the same unreasonable prejudice of colour, and have all been treated with the same measure of gross injustice whenever the whites have come into contact with them as slave-dealers, slave-owners, or unscrupulous, intruding colonists. Nor are any of them without links of natural union with welldisposed white men, recent positive facts showing that, when dealt with equitably and wisely, all these Africans are alike willing and able to make us suitable returns for every social benefit imparted to them. It is not pretended that they are free from human vices belonging to their rude condition; but every form of progress has demonstrated their capacity for the highest civilisation. philanthropist and the missionary have ever found them docile. Science has long since opened the way to their teeming millions, who receive our travellers with confiding welcome. They themselves also offer abundantly that indication of capability of improvement-the love of travel. At the same time, legitimate The trade |