1816.) Dr. John Robison. 175 
~ that he should have no reason to repent the confidence which he 
placed in the Board. But when on his return he came to look for 
the reward, to which the success and trouble of the undertaking 
certainly entitled him, he soon found that he had greatly erred in 
leaving himself so much at the mercy of unforeseen contingencies. 
Lord Anson was ill of the disease of which he died, and was not in 
a condition to attend to business. Admiral Knowles was disgusted 
with the Admiralty, and with the Ministry, by which he thought 
himself ill-used ; so that Mr. Robison had nothing to look for from 
ersopal kindness, and could trust only to the justice and modera- 
tion of his claims. ‘These were of little advantage to him; for 
such was the inattention of the Lords of the Admiralty, and the 
Members of the Board of Longitude, that he could not obtain 
access to any of them, nor even receive from them any answer to 
his memorials. 
The picture which his letters to his father present, at this time, is 
that of a mind suffering severely from unworthy treatment, where 
it was Jeast suspected. Men in office do not reflect, while they 
are busy about the concerns of nations, how much evil may be done 
by their neglect to do justice to an individual. ‘They may be extin- 
guishing the fire of genius, thrusting down merit below the level 
it should rise to, or prematurely surrounding the mind of a young 
man with a fence of suspicion and distrust worse than the evils 
which it proposes to avert. Like other kinds of injustice, this may, 
however, meet with its punishment ; though, the victim of unme- 
rited neglect may remain for ever obscure, and his sufferings for 
ever unknown, he may also emerge from obscurity, and the treat- 
ment he has met with may meet the eye of the public, It is pro- 
bable that the member of these Boards most conspicuous for rank 
or for science would not have been above some feeling of regret if 
he had learnt that the young man whose petitions he disregarded 
was to become the ornament of his country, and the ill treatment 
he then met with a material fact in the history of his life. 
But though we must condemn the neglect of which Mr. Robison 
had so much reason to complain, we do by no means regret that 
the recompense which he or his friends had in view was not actually 
conferred on him. ‘This was no other than an appointment to the 
place of a purser in a ship of war; a sort of preferment which, to 
a man of the genius, information, and accomplishment, of Mr. 
Robison, must have turned out rather as a punishment than a re- 
ward. It was, however, the object which, by the advice of Sir 
Charles Knowles, he now aspired to; and indeed he had done so 
ever after his first voyage in the Royal William ; for it appears that 
he had wished to be made Purser to the Peregrine at the time when 
Lieut. Knowles was appointed to the command of that ship, though, 
considering its smallness, the situation could have been attended 
with little emolument.* 
~* It is, however, true that the place of Purser was afterwards offered to Mz., 
