Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/206

NO. 1. anew: The Commissioners would no doubt, like any other public men, have taken umbrage, at the charge of gross incapacity in the management of their trust; but the vindication of George 3rd has led to the discovery, that a philosopher, by experiment, who, unlike Irax the voluptuary, in Zadig, would not have been weary of hearing his own praises, and whose powers of persuasion must have been contemptible, dictated to his colleagues like some Tribune, armed with the veto, to a knot of striplings, ere they had assumed the toga virilis in old Rome.—How could those men look to the approbation of posterity, or suppose the juggle would not one day transpire, and show the springs and movements behind the curtain (of their official reports) not much to the honour of a trust which so palpably sacrificed the public advantage to the sinister purposes of the Earl of Morton; who when he brought in his bill, knew well (or, if he did not, it was his duty to enquire) that the Claimant was in the habit of resorting to his former works, in prosecuting his new ones. So that if he was not actuated by undisguised revenge (for his never to be forgotten, or forgiven, repulse under the 2nd George 3rd) if he had bona fidœ consulted the best interests of the country and of science, the obvious course was to have left these machines in the care of the Inventor during his life, taking security for their being delivered up afterwards; in perfect order (the act of God excepted.)—Had they remained in Red Lion Square, with the advantage of such a Ciceroni, they would have been a treat to scientific men at home, and to intelligent foreigners not a few. But at Greenwich, in their injured state, they were a memento of dishonour to the parties concerned in claiming and removing then, which will not want magnifying to posterity. thus perished the first essays of this long-wished for Invention!