repaired without having some essential parts made
their defensive arguments, like the water in the tub of the Danaides, or to invoke sublunar mountains to cover them from the odium their conduct would excite. The first in order of the three machines, and the one which, from the gross mismanagement described, was actually let fall in the removal; was that which by direction of Sir Charles Wager had, in 1736, been sent to Lisbon. On its return from whence, though almost on a meridian, it corrected the reckoning of the Orford near a degree and a half. It had not been prejudiced by the rolling of the ship in the bay of Biscay, but experienced a different fate when demanded by the Board of Longitude. And now—what said the trustees of this public property? who met on the 24th of May,[subnote 1] fully prepared for the Rev. Nevil Maskelyne's report of the transactions of the preceding day, and indeed without any other business apparently, excepting to order the notes of the Astronomer Royal [he being so skilled in mechanics, to wit] to be printed along with those of the Gentlemen who had attended the disclosure of the Invention, and given in an appendix to the plates, with the drawings and explanations thereof.—If the reader is impatient to know what circumlocutory process, or opaque varnish, or methodicial arrangement of syllogisms, tropes and figures, cut and dry from Alma Mater, was employed to mystify those Commissioners whose wits were not in the Moon, he will be wholly disappointed; for the Manager and his deputy through whose affectation, ill concealing their ignorance, so much injury was done to these curious machines, with one exception, before mentioned, knew too well the men of straw they had to deal with, whose duty it certainly was to have been certified of the safety of this public property (always so called) but who slept on their watch, instead of seizing the helm, and kicking down the hatchway ladder, head or heels foremost, these mechanical
- ↑ At this Board the letter dictated by Sir John Cast was delivered in, which it took five months to answer in as many lines. [See the Preface.]
