HENRY BELL. 189 



them observed, " Here comes Mr. Percival." The group was 

 instantly joined by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who 

 addressed them with the remark, " You will be glad to know 

 that I mean to propose ;^20,ooo for Crompton ; do you think 

 it will be satisfactory?" Hearing this, Crompton moved of^ 

 from motives of delicacy, and did not hear the reply. He was 

 scarcely out of sight, when the madman Bellingham came up 

 and shot Percival dead. This frightful catastrophe lost Cromp- 

 ton ;^ 1 5,000. Six weeks intervened before his case could be 

 brought before Parliament, and then, on the 24th June, Lord 

 Stanley moved that he should be awarded ;^5ooo, which the 

 House voted without opposition ; ^^20,000 might have been 

 had as easily, and no reason appears to have been given for 

 the reduction of Mr. Percival's proposal. All conversant with 

 Crompton's merits felt the grant to be inadequate, whether 

 measured by the intrinsic value of his service, or by the rate of 

 rewards accorded by Parliament to other inventors. 



HENRY BELL. 



Steam navigation was introduced on American waters in 

 I So 7, Fulton launching his steamboat on the Hudson on the 

 3rd of October of that year. It was not, however, till 181 2 

 that the first regular passenger steamer made its appearance in 

 this country on the Clyde. This was the Comet, built for Mr. 

 Henry Bell, the proprietor of the Helensburgh baths on the 

 Clyde, and who had long been a most zealous advocate of 

 steam propulsion. 



Henry Bell was bom in Linlithgowshire, in 1767. Dr. 

 Cleland, in his work on Glasgow, speaks of him as an 

 " ingenious, untutored engineer and citizen of Glasgow," and 

 states that it may be said, without the Iiazard of impropriety, 



