Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/93

Rh "The original intention" of the Government is here stated to have been communicated to Mr. Babbage, both in the letter from the Treasury of the 3rd of December, 1829, granting the 3,000l., and also in Mr. Goulburn's private letter of the 20th of November, 1829. These letters have been just given; and it certainly does not appear from either of them, that the "original intention" was then in any degree more apparent than it was at the commencement of the undertaking in July, 1823.

On the 16th of December, 1829, Mr. Babbage wrote to Lord Ashley, observing, that Mr. Goulburn seemed to think that he [Mr. Babbage] had commenced the machine on his own account; and that, pursuing it zealously, he had expended more than was prudent, and had then applied to Government for aid. He remarked, that a reference to papers and dates would confirm his own positive declaration, that this was never for one moment, in his apprehension, the ground on which the matter rested; and that the following facts would prove that it was absolutely impossible it could have been so:—

1stly. Mr. Babbage referred to the passage (already quoted) in his letter to Sir Humphry Davy, in which he had expressed his opinion as decidedly adverse to the plan of making a larger Machine, on his own account.

2ndly. Mr. Babbage stated that the small Model of the Machine seen by the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Goulburn, was completed before his interview with Lord Goderich in July, 1823; for it was alluded to in the Report of the Royal Society, of the 1st of May, 1823.

3rdly. That the interview with Lord Goderich having taken place in July, 1823; the present Machine (i. e. the Difference