the year 1726, he had invented and executed the gridiron pendulum, and made a regulator which has gone from that time to this without ever erring more than a second in a month. For pretty near the last half century, his life has been solely spent in adapting the principles of his clock to the motion of a ship, upon the faith of the Act of Queen Anne: and from the time I became capable of doing any thing, to the age of forty-three years, I have been wholly employed in the same manner.
Till about the year 1761, we had no difficulties to encounter besides those which nature threw in our way; for until the Invention was brought to maturity, we were happy in the uniform countenance and protection of the Board of Longitude; but no sooner was it evident that we had succeeded, than by a strange fatality that Board turned against us, and has ever since acted, as if it had been instituted for the express purpose of preventing our Invention from being made useful to mankind.[1]
In 1761, we demanded and obtained the ultimate trial, prescribed by the Act of Queen Anne, viz: a voyage to the West Indies.—By appointment of the Commissioners of Longitude, I went to Jamaica with the Watch, which kept its Longitude considerably within the nearest limits prescribed by that Act. However when the Commissioners were called upon to certify the fact, they were pleased to declare the contrary. We desired copies of those calculations made by their order, upon which their decision was founded; which were refused; nor were we ever able to come at the calculations, either by official applications or private favour, till several years afterwards, when they were ordered to be laid before the House of Commons; and it then appeared, two of them were absolutely inconclusive, proving neither one thing nor another, and that the third decided in our favour.
In the mean while we had consented, for the sake of re-
- ↑ The necessity of generalizing his statement, precluded the insertion of what we find in his pamphlet, that "far the greater part of the Commissioners" (meaning the Admirals and the Civilians, except Lord Morton) "were perfectly innocent of the treatment he had met with."
