time ignorant of the nature of Parliamentary applications, without money, and with few friends, browbeaten by one set of men, betrayed by another, and so lost the opportunity of petitioning each branch of the Legislature against the passing of so injurious a law.
After much difficulty respecting the discovery of the principles and construction of the Watch, we at length obtained £7,500, being the remainder of the first half of our rewards (the other £2,500 having being advanced to us, and actually spent in making the experiments and trials:[1]) after which the
- ↑ This may much surprise Mr. Croker, whose want of experience on the subject, when, in 1818, he introduced his bill for consolidating the several Acts of Parliament connected with the Longitude, led him to advert to "Mr. Harrison having being so fortunate as to receive £4,000 more than the Act of Queen Anne contemplated;" which he, mistakenly imputes to the confusion among the several Acts of Parliament relating to the Longitude (but of this anon.) Either for want of leisure, or from relying on the report of a clerk, he includes in this sum what was advanced as an outfit to the younger Harrison for the two voyages; which as the Astronomers employed were considered in the same way, could not be fairly reckoned as any part of the reward. Another advance was to indemnify the Candidate for his expenses in procuring the Act under which the separate Commission had sat. These ought in all reason to have been defrayed by Lord Morton, who was the sole cause of rendering that measure entirely useless. But, so it is, Mr. Croker will find this expense included in that of the outfit for the Barbadoes voyage, 9th August, 1768, which with that for the former trial, extends these items to £550; and this reduces the overplus, he states, by that sum which leaves £3,450. Supposing the reward to have been paid after the return from Jamaica; as it would have been in the general belief, had not the Lunar party, when his success threatened to clap an extinguisher on their expectation, resorted to the daring injustice of refusing him a check on the computations. Now if the interest of one moiety of the reward, taken at 3½ per
exclusive of a deficient headpiece here and there (according to Dr. Knox) "These Professors of abstract sciences" showed that the philosophy of human nature was a branch of metaphysics, in which John Harrison, unlearned as he was, far excelled the Gownsmen, when he said, in a letter to the Board, May 24th, 1766, "I am ready to execute your commands; but no man chuses to begin a journey, or to enter upon any piece of work, without some view where it shall end."
