] 08 Rev. W. V. Harcourt on Lord Brougham's statements 



iloge ? " Whether or not Mr. Cavendish had heard of Mr. 

 Watt's theory previous to drawing his conclusions, appears 

 more doubtful : the supposition that he had so heard rests on 

 the improbability of Sir C. Blagden and many others Jcnow- 

 ing what Mr. Watt had done and not communicating it to 

 Mr. Cavendish, and on the omission of any assertion in Mr. 

 Cavendish's paper, even in the part written by Sir C. Blagden 

 with the view of claiming priority as against M. Lavoisier, 

 that Mr. Cavendish had drawn his conclusion before April 

 1783. Mr. Watt's theory was well known among the mem- 

 bers of the Society some months before Mr. Cavendish's state- 

 ment appears to have been reduced into writing, and eight 

 months before it was presented to the Society. That the first 

 letter of April 1783 was for some time, — two months as appears 

 from the papers of Mr. Watt, — in thehandsof Sir Joseph Banks 

 and other members of the Society during the preceding 

 spring, is certain from the statements in the note to p. 330 ; 

 and that Sir C. Blagden, the Secretary, should not have seen 

 it seems impossible, for Sir Joseph Banks must have delivered 

 it to him at the time when it was intended to be read at one 

 of the Society's meetings (Phil. Trans, p. 330, note) ; and as 

 the letter itself remains among the Society's records in the 

 same volume with the paper into which the greater part of it 

 was introduced, it must have been in the custody of Sir C. 

 Blagden. It is equally difficult to suppose that the person 

 who wrote the remarkable passage already referred to respect- 

 ing Mr. Cavendish's conclusions having been communicated 

 to M. Lavoisier, should not have vientioned to Mr. Caven- 

 dish that Mr. Watt had drawn the same conclusion in the 

 spring of 1783, that is, in April at the latest', for the con- 

 clusions are identical, with the single difference that Mr. 

 Cavendish calls dephlogisticated air water deprived of its 

 phlogiston, and Mr. Watt says that water is composed of de- 

 phlogisticated air and phlogiston." — (Life of Watt, pp. 396- 

 398.) 



To what does all this argument tend ? — Would it lead any 

 one to guess that you mean to acquit Cavendish of plagiarism, 

 or that "you have yourself," as you elsewhere affirm, " always 

 been convinced that Mr. Watt had, unknown to Cavendish, 

 anticipated his great discovery ? " Allowing a certain interval 

 of time and place, I should not wonder at your having for- 

 gotten or laid aside your doubts whether Cavendish, with 

 the connivance of Blagden, had not purloined the conclusions 

 of Watt ; but I have never before known an instance of so 

 deliberate a disavowal of a suspicion contemporaneous and in 

 juxtaposition with its no less deliberate reiteration. 



