IfO Mr Baily's Account of 



Flamsteed, however, had not sufficient interest to stop the 

 press, for the work, thus mutilated and corrupted, ultimately ap- 

 peared in one volume, accompanied with a disingenuous and 

 illiberal preface by Halley, who superintended the edition *, 

 This conduct of the referees was evidently unjustifiable, as they 

 had no right to break the seals of his deposit without his consent 

 and approbation, even at the command (as they pretend) of the 

 Queen -f*. The whole of the documents were clearly Flamsteed's 

 own ; the observations had been made with his own instruments, 

 and reduced at his own expense ; the Government had not (as I 

 have repeatedly remarked) contributed any thing beyond his 

 paltry salary of L. 1 00, and that charged with the execution of 

 duties that belonged not to his situation. The least, therefore, 

 which they could have done, should have been to let him print 

 his own works in his own way, not only on account of the labour, 

 the anxiety, the money which they had cost him, but also, and 

 more especially, because there was no one so competent as him- 

 self to judge of the most proper manner in which they ought 

 to appear before the public for the promotion of astronomy. 

 The xvhole would then have been finished in much less time than 

 this single volume of Halley 's. 



This spurious and premature publication of his works was a 

 mortifying circumstance to Flamsteed, and annoyed him very 

 much ; and it cannot be wondered at that he should so feel it, and 

 resent it accordingly. In his correspondence with Mr Sharp on 

 this subject, he opens his whole [mind on the subject, calls Halley 



• This edition will frequently be referred to in the subsequent pages, as 

 " Halley 's editions of I7I2." It contains, besides the spurious Catalogue and 

 the garbled ObservationSj nearly the whole of what now forms the first volume 

 of the Historia Coslestis. In the preface Halley has made many representa- 

 tions and misstatements, some of these I have pointed out in pages 385 and 

 386 ; and I will here farther add, in contradiction to what Halley has stated, 

 that it was not agreed that the catalogue should be prefixed to the first vo- 

 lume, and that he has in many other parts of the said preface given a colour- 

 ing to facts which leave a false and erroneous impression on the mind of the 

 reader. There are very few copies of this work now in existence, nearly the 

 whole of the edition having been destroyed by Flamsteed, as will be related 

 in the sequeL 



t Flamsteed says that the order of the Queen was obtained after the of* 

 fence was committed. This is a question, however, of but little moment in a 

 case of absolute wrong. 



