proper to preclude me from, by a new law, passed at the instance of the Commissioners of Longitude, placing me too certainly under the discretion of the Commissioners[1] and totally changing the terms on which the reward was to be given me; enacting that I should have half of it when I had disclosed the principles and construction of the machine, and assigned over for the use of the public the last made Timekeeper, together with the three others which were not so perfect as the last; and the other half when I should have made more Watches, without determining how many, and proved them to the satisfaction of the Commissioners, without defining the mode of trial.[2]
I frankly confess that from thenceforward I considered the second moiety of the reward as lost for ever. The first moiety I obtained, though it was with great difficulty, as the Act required me to ex-
- ↑ Although he well knew the origin of the Act to amend, explain, &c. which pointed at the Earl of Morton; yet he thought himself constrained to advert to the Commissioners in general terms only.
- ↑ This uncertainty, both in the mode of trial, and the degree of exactness required, was suitable to the framer of the Act, which Lord Morton called his own. But if the rest of the Commissioners were not become perfect cyphers, they should have told him he was contravening his professed purpose, to amend the 12th of Queen Anne, in which both those points were distinctly settled: that his Lordship ought to know the total want of precision, which he was substituting, proved only his incapacity for intermeddling in such concerns.
