on the Oil Question. 107 



which forms the subject of our inquiry *." I have only a few 

 more words to offer, and then I hope I may dismiss every 

 consideration respecting the apparatus which has been chosen, 

 either by the one party or the other. My ideas are briefly 

 these : 



Had Messrs. Severn and Co., afraid to trust to the justice of 

 their cause, sought to gain their end by means which men of 

 honour would not have deigned to employ ;.— had they, instead 

 of resting on plain facts, searched this metropolis for persons 

 willing to aid a system which might make the worse appear the 

 better reason ; what course would such a person have pursued ? 

 He would have procured a vessel, as unlike as possible to 

 the oil-vessel in question, — much larger in size, with a tube four 

 inches wide instead of one, and sixty feet in height in place of 

 sixteen. Instead of communicating with one sugar-pan, it 

 would have communicated with six or eight ; and with a fire- 

 place so constructed, and the oil in such quantity, that it 

 would have been impossible to have raised the fluid to 400°. 



Experiments under such circumstances might have been 

 made. They might have been pompously detailed in court, and 

 second-rate operators might have been brought forward as wit- 

 nesses to those experiments, and their efiects : — But what must 

 the judge — what must the jury — what must the public, have 

 said of such conduct ? Would they have termed it the con- 

 duct of honourable men ? 



It is impossible for me to notice in the compass of a paper suit- 

 able for this Journal, all the absurd statements and groundless 

 charges that appear in the book which the associated witnesses 

 have published ; but there are som^ parts, which have not yet 

 been remarked upon, that must not be allowed to pass without 

 obsetvation. At page 31, they say, " All the changes which take 

 place in the nature of whale-oil, when exposed to various tem- 

 peratures, both for a short time and a long one, admit of easy 

 and philosophical explanation ; and it has surprised us, that 



* Mr. Gurney's Report on the trial, Severn veuus the Phoenix Office, 

 page 451. 



