I have already had occasion to mention, that at the time I received the certificate for the first moiety of the reward, the Watch was delivered up; it remained six months locked up at the Admiralty, and was then removed to Greenwich, to be the subject of those experiments concerning which I now trouble the public.[1] The other three machines,
- ↑ Although no manner of precaution was observed in the removal of these curious, if not highly valuable Machines, which the Manager ever and anon designated as public property (vide his own Act) yet the minutes of a Board, 2nd May, 1767, lay down a plan altogether elaborate, and in which the Hospital barge is introduced for the removal of a box about ten inches square, and six or seven deep, with a handle on each side, when it was to be conveyed from Flamstead Hill to Mr. Kendal's house in Furnival's Inn Court, to be subjected to no experiment but that of being taken to pieces immediately. This over-acted part contrasts so clumsily with the total want of the commonest care when the Machines (mentioned in the next line) were taken possession of, that whoever is no novice in such matters will not read it as the contriver of the business (we believe Lord Morton) designed he should. The parade of
reluctantly, as appears on their minutes. He was an excellent workman, but not gifted with inventive powers: so that the Manager of the concern persisting in employing him, instead of the proper person, cannot be too much reprobated.—The meanness charged on the Commissioners in the paragraph, was not applicable to them as a body in pecuniary concessions, but arose from the sordid spirit of the northern Aristocrat, who either from education or habit, as different instances in these transactions show, would always appropriate the labour of others without any recompence if he could: and when on an occasion described, he advised the Candidate to borrow all the money he could, he did not offer to lend him a shilling.
