Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/166

NO. 1. yet I intreat his patient attention whilst I advance one step farther, and shew, that although Mr. Maskelyne has presented us with a set of observations which according to his mode of calculation, prove what he advances, yet those very observations when lightly reasoned upon prove the contrary; and that in each of the periods he refers to, except those of the severe frost and improper positions (against which Mr. Maskelyne ought to have informed the world I never warranted this particular Watch) it kept time with sufficient correctness to determine the Longitude within the limits of the Act of Queen Anne.

The reader by this time knows enough of the subject to see, that in order to try whether the Watch would or would not keep time with sufficient exactness to determine the Longitude, Mr. Maskelyne's first operation, after receiving it, should have been to ascertain the rate of its going. But no such thing happened; he knew it had not gone exactly correspondent to mean time, during the voyage to Barbadoes; it had been publicly enough declared that its rate of going had been since altered; and, if he had not received that information, he might nay must have discovered it in the first twenty-four hours trial; however, without once attending to this essential circumstance, he goes to work, comparing the first period of six weeks (which he observes is generally reckoned the term of a West India voyage) when it was in an