Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/175

Rh Engine, the property of the nation, these Commissioners placed it in a small hole in a dark corner, where it could, with some difficulty, be seen by six people at the same time.

No remonstrance was of the slightest avail; it was "Hobson's choice," that or none. It was represented that all other space was occupied.

A trophy of children's toys, whose merits, it is true, the Commissioners were somewhat more competent to appreciate, filled one of the most prominent positions in the building. On the other hand, a trophy of the workmanship of English engineers, executed by machine tools thirty years before, and admitted by the best judges to be unsurpassed by any rival, was placed in a position not very inappropriate for the authorities themselves who condemned it to that locality.

But no hired aristocratic agent was employed to excite the slumbering perceptions of the Commissioners, who might have secured a favourable position for the Difference Engine, by practising on their good nature, or by imposing upon their imbecility.

It has been urged, in extenuation of the conduct of these Commissioners, that their duty as guardians of the funds intrusted to them, and of the interests of the Guarantors, compelled them to practise a rigid economy.

Rigid economy is to be respected only when it is under the control of judgment, not of favouritism. If the machinery for making arithmetical calculations which was placed at the disposal of the Commissioners had been properly arranged, it might have been made at once a source of high gratification to the public and even of profit to the Exhibition.