to have been forgotten,[1] and when every thing was done that could be done to frustrate the professed
- ↑ The consideration is very important towards analyzing the gross imposition practised on Parliament by this consequential character; that the 12th of Queen Anne having left untouched the right of property in the tangible materials that might thereafter be used for discovering the Longitude, whatever form might be given them. Lord Morton assumed, by what he called "the reason of the thing," that they were public property; and accordingly inserted a clause in his bill to that effect—without once consulting the Attorney, or the Solicitor General on a point of so much interest to his rival: for if those authorities had differed with him, what then?—Granting however the correctness of the Thane's decision, without further enquiry, yet there can be but one opinion on the collateral
and his hand vindicated his genius, but the difference need scarcely be pointed out, between the labour of choice, and the dictum that weighed him to the ground. Exclusive of the enmity borne him by the northern Peer, it is to be lamented that he fell into such ignorant hands.—A Colbert, a Chatham, a Frederic 3rd, or Cromwell, on ascertaining the drift of his ambition, which was to see his chronometry brought into general use, would have thought the business done to their bands, and counted it folly to interfere, unless it bad been to stimulate his pride, by affecting to doubt his competency for what he had undertaken; but the Manager, who judged of the meanness of others by his own (as when he advised the Candidate to borrow all the money he could, yet did not offer to lend him a stiver) was entirely incapable of entering into the merits of the subject in that view: and with the exception of Sir John Cust, who would not bow to the Baal the Royal Society had sent them, the Commissioners of Longitude have left a stigma on their names—a brand of reproach, which a patent scrubbing-brush can no more efface than it can the indelible complexion of the Ethiopian.
