Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

Excerpt from Essays on the Endowment of Research The nineteenth century will be marked in the constitutional annals of England as the epoch of revival of the central authority. Since the overthrow of the crown in the great revolution of the seventeenth century (1640-88), local and particular institutions and corporations had almost wholly emancipated themselves from control by government. The arm of the executive was weakened, and could not reach bodies so remote and powerful as the municipal and charitable corporations. The growth of the power of the House of Commons gradually supplied the want of strength in the government. This assembly began by wresting its own nomination from the great nobles and landowners. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

In nineteenth-century Britain, learned societies and clubs became contested sites in which a new kind of identity was created: the charisma and persona of the scholar, of the intellectual.