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APPENDIX.
NO. 1.
with, nor will I take up more of the reader's time by a detail of the very earnest attention paid by the French Government to this object.[1] If our rivals in Commerce and Arts should rob us of the honour as well as the first advantages of the discovery, I hope it will be admitted that the fault is not mine: and I likewise flatter myself that I have now furnished sufficient materials for the justification of my
- ↑ The circumstance of the French Government under Lewis XVI., having sent over an eminent watchmaker in their employ to purchase the secret of the Timekeeper, was stated at page 141. M. Berthoud, who is alluded to, was latterly a member of the Parisian Board of Longitude, and it suggests that our neighbours seem to have been desirous to profit by a proceeding so sinister, and defective, as that of making one class of candidates for arriving at the Longitude, exclusive judges of the merits of another, more likely in the opinion of the great Newton to accomplish that object; yet they had no representative or advocate to look after their interests. This defect, although so obvious, and exciting the attention of foreigners, Mr. Croker unaccountably transferred to the new Board, when, in 1818, he remodelled the Commission; for the scientific members were all of them Astronomers and Mathematicians without an associate of eminence in the theory and practice of chronometry. It may be said there would be a jealousy among men that line of pursuit; but the rivalry in all professions is essentially different from that esprit du corps which incites them to join against the common enemy: and from which John Harrison so often drank the cup of bitterness.
the writer then continues—to reconcile which accounts, "we applied to Dr. Maskelyue for authentic information; but, with his usual reserve, the Doctor declined giving us any information on the subject."
