Page:Memoirs of a Trait in the Character of George III.djvu/228

NO. 1. Board of Longitude they attend) and what can induce the Astronomer Royal, thus to discourage an invention which they are specially constituted to improve, protect, and support? I might answer with Mr. Maskelyne, "that is none of my business to account for."—The facts are so, and this public relation of them is extorted from me, by a conviction that no other way is left me to obtain justice, or so likely to prevent the Invention from perishing. However, if it is expected of me, like Mr. Maskelyne, to deliver an opinion on this point; I shall declare what I believe very sincerely, that by far the greater part of the Commissioners are perfectly innocent of the treatment I have met with: most of them are Commissioners by virtue of great employments which engage their time and attention: a Board so constituted is continually changing: and this being a matter of science which to many may seem rather abstruse, it was very naturally left to the management of a few of those members who stand in the most immediate relation to science, and whose opinions, upon a business of this nature, the rest of the Board had too much modesty to call