[Footnote 19:  Blue Book C—­1446, 1876.  On the Selection and Training of Candidates for the Indian Civil Service.]

Let us now suppose that a way was seen for carrying some such idea as this into practice, and that family merit, however defined, was allowed to count, for however little, in competitive examinations.  The effect would be very great:  it would show that ancestral qualities are of present current value; it would give an impetus to collecting family histories; it would open the eyes of every family and or society at large to the importance of marriage alliance with a good stock; it would introduce the subject of race into a permanent topic of consideration, which (on the supposition of its bona fide importance that has been assumed for the sake of argument) experience would show to be amply justified.  Any act that first gives a guinea stamp to the sterling guinea’s worth of natural nobility might set a great social avalanche in motion.

ENDOWMENTS.

Endowments and bequests have been freely and largely made for various social purposes, and as a matter of history they have frequently been made to portion girls in marriage.  It so happens that the very day that I am writing this, I notice an account in the foreign newspapers (September 19, 1882) of an Italian who has bequeathed a sum to the corporation of London to found small portions for three poor girls to be selected by lot.  And again, a few weeks ago I read also in the French papers of a trial, in reference to the money adjudged to the “Rosiere” of a certain village.  Many cases in which individuals and states have portioned girls may be found in Malthus.  It is therefore far from improbable that if the merits of good race became widely recognised and its indications were rendered more surely intelligible than they now are, that local endowments, and perhaps adoptions, might be made in favour of those of both sexes who showed evidences of high race and of belonging to prolific and thriving families.  One cannot forecast their form, though we may reckon with some assurance that in one way or another they would be made, and that the better races would be given a better chance of marrying early.

A curious relic of the custom which was universal three or four centuries ago, of entrusting education to celibate priests, forbade Fellows of Colleges to marry, under the penalty of losing their fellowships.  It is as though the winning horses at races were rendered ineligible to become sires, which I need hardly say is the exact reverse of the practice.  Races were established and endowed by “Queen’s plates” and otherwise at vast expense, for the purpose of discovering the swiftest horses, who are thenceforward exempted from labour and reserved for the sole purpose of propagating their species.  The horses who do not win races, or who are not otherwise specially selected for their natural gifts, are prevented from