for many years, the time seems ripe for it, but of
course its conduct would require much confidential inquiry and a
great deal of trouble in verifying returns. Still, it admits of
being done, and if the results, derived from different sources,
should confirm one another, they could be depended on.

[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 g