To The War Department    1st. May 1856

Royal Institution 1^st. May 1856

My Lord.¹

While fulfilling the engagements of the last three days I have been accompanied at all hours by the painful consciousness that I was the object of your lordship’s censure. I at once acknowledge the justice of that censure, and had I reflected sufficiently before acting I think I should have seen the irregularity of the course which the feelings of the moment induced me to pursue.

And now would your lordship's kindness permit me to state (though not as any extenuation of my error) the serious considerations which resulted in the hasty publication of the note² to which your lordship has referred. If the statement serve no higher purpose it will at all events satisfy the desire which I feel to appear before you in my true character.

It is doubtless well known to your Lordship that among a highly educated, earnest, and influential class of men the opinion is daily gaining ground that experimental science is neglected to a deplorable extent in this country. Sharing this opinion I accepted the examinership in Physics³ with the strongest desire to render the department efficient, and with the hope that the subject would at length have a position assigned to it in the service commensurate with its great importance. I believe that no other portion of science could appeal to and exercise to the same extent the mental qualities required by an engineer or artillery officer. Such an officer on the field of battle, or before the beleaguered city cannot proceed from postulates and axioms. The process of thought under such circumstances is not solely deductive. He has to observe and compare facts, to draw conclusions from them and to convert these conclusions into events. The qualities of mind here necessary are precisely those which experimental science is calculated to exercise and develop; and yet in the values assigned to the various subjects in which candidates have been examined, pure and mixed mathematics, which are wholly deductive, and thus appeal to only one half of the powers which an officer of artillery or engineers must call into action are rated at more than three times the value of those sciences which appeal to all the intellectual powers: namely natural philosophy and chemistry.

Regarded simply as a means of general intellectual development I would respectfully submit to your lordship whether the experimental sciences ought not to occupy a higher place. But if their possible practical applications be taken into account the argument in their favour is surely greatly strengthened. There are only a few who are aware of what might be done with the agencies of Light, heat, magnetism, and electricity, if their principles and treatment were understood by military men. I will not detain your lordship by dwelling upon particular illustrations. Daily and hourly the laws of physics might, and would, find application in the hands of an artillery or engineer officer who had mastered them, and become familiar with the experimental combinations by which nature is questioned and her forces directed and controlled. To one like myself, who sees in experimental science a powerful accessary to the military strength of the country, it must be a source of pain to find in the examinations instituted under your lordship's authority, natural philosophy and chemistry rated at precisely half the value of Greek and Latin, and considered of less importance in a soldier’s practical life than English literature.

Feeling that the sciences referred to did not occupy a position at all corresponding to their importance, I ventured at an early period to represent this to M^r Moseley. I have reason to believe that though M^r Moseley’s own achievements have been more in the domain of deductive than of inductive science, still his opinion on the point in question was substantially the same as my own. In reply to my representation he however stated to me, that as the values had been fixed by a committee appointed for the purpose we had no alternative but to accept them. After the second examination,⁴ and more through a feeling of duty than from any hope of effecting a change, I again stated my convictions upon this subject; but, as I anticipated, the statement was unavailing.

Though I could not subscribe to the estimates of the committee referred to, and though I knew I should be backed in my dissent by some of the most eminent individuals in this country, still I resolved to work on in accordance with the decisions of the committee until time should give me an opportunity of pleading the cause of experimental science with some prospect of success.

This was my state of mind when the enclosed note⁵ from Professor Galbraith of Trinity College Dublin came into my hands. Professor Galbraith complains that the department under my charge has been ignored in the report submitted to your Lordship,⁶ ‘though a very cursory glance at the numbers would prove the very great superiority of the answers in this over every other part of the examination’.⁷ It was evident to me from the tenor of the report referred to,⁸ that M^r Moseley had restricted himself to the publication of the incidental remarks which accompanied the returns furnished by the examiner. I recollected that I had made no such remarks, as I trusted that the creditable array of figures which I sent in would tell their own tale. I saw that in this omission the complaint of Professor Galbraith really originated, and at the moment I supplied the omission in the manner which has invoked your Lordship's reproval.

Having thus both by the acknowledgement of my irregularity, and the performance of what I believe to be a duty to your lordship, to the service and to science, relieved my mind from a painful burthen, I place myself entirely in your lordships hands; prepared to acquiesce in any decision which the circumstances of the case may render necessary.

I have the honour to be | Your lordship's most humble servan^t | John Tyndall

RS MS JT/2/7/313 –19