Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/103

Rh The duration of the Duke of Wellington's Administration was short; and no decision on the subject of the Difference Engine was obtained.

On the 15th of May the Difference Engine was alluded to in the House of Commons; when the Chancellor of the Exchequer did Mr. Babbage the justice to state distinctly, that the whole of the money voted had been expended in paying the workmen and for the materials employed in constructing it, and that not one shilling of it had ever gone into his own pocket.

About this time several communications took place between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr. Babbage, respecting a reference to the Royal Society for an opinion on the subject of the Engine.

A new and serious impediment to the possibility of executing one of the plans which had been suggested to the Duke of Wellington for completing the Difference Engine arose from these delays. The draftsman whom Mr. Babbage had, at his own expense, employed, both on the Difference and on the Analytical Engine, received an offer of a very liberal salary, if he would enter into an engagement abroad, which would occupy many years. His assistance was indispensable, and his services were retained only by Mr. Babbage considerably increasing his salary.

On the 14th of January, 1836, Mr. Babbage received a communication from the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Spring Rice ), expressing his desire to come to some definite result on the subject of the Calculating Engine, in which he remarked, that the conclusion to be drawn from Mr. Babbage's statement to the Duke of Wellington was, that he