104 RUMFORD. 



felt against him, he came to the desperate resolution of quitting his 

 native country, and leaving his wife and child. To effect this he 

 first escaped to Boston, where he remained, with his friend General 

 Gage, until the evacuation of the town by the British troops, when 

 he embarked on board the Scarborough, and ? set sail for England, 

 with despatches from General Gage to Lord George Germain, the 

 British Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs. 



Although Thompson arrived in England the bearer of gloomy 

 tidings, and sustaining the equivocal character of a deserter from 

 the American cause, he soon showed that he was a man capable of 

 commanding his fortune anywhere. The capacity in which he had 

 come over introduced him to various public men who were both 

 struck by his abilities and charmed by his manners. But a short 

 time elapsed after his arrival before he was offered a post in the 

 Colonial Office, and four years after, in 1780, was raised by his 

 patron Lord Germain to the post of under secretary for the colonies, 

 an instance of rapid promotion which, considering the circumstances 

 in which the subject of it stood, is almost unexampled. 



The income and consequence which Thompson derived from this 

 office gave him admission to the highest metropolitan circles, and 

 he had thus opportunities not only of becoming known, but also of 

 exercising his inventive mind in many pursuits not immediately 

 connected with his official duties. Fertility of resources, and a 

 disposition to propose improvements in all departments, appear to 

 have been his most striking characteristics, and it was probably 

 this ready genius for practical reform in everything which came 

 under his notice, that recommended him so much to public men. 

 While engaged generally in a variety of matters, Thompson was at 

 the same time following out certain specific lines of scientific inves- 

 tigation. His experiments on the heat caused by friction, deduced 

 from the boring of cannon, are among the best we possess. 



In 1777 he made some curious and interesting experiments on 

 the strength of solid bodies, which were, however, never published. 

 In 1778 he employed himself in further experiments on the strength 

 of gunpowder and the velocity of military projectiles ; and these 

 were followed up by a cruise of some months in the Channel fleet, 

 where he proposed to repeat his experiments on a larger scale. He 

 communicated the result of his researches on this subject, in several 

 papers, to the ' Philosophical Transactions ' of the Royal Society, 

 of which he became a member in the last-mentioned year. 



On the retirement of Lord George Germain from office, Thompson 

 was sent out to New York in the year 1781, with the royal com- 

 mission of major, afterwards changed to that of lieutenant-colonel, 

 charged with the task of organizing an efficient regiment of dra- 

 goons out of the broken and disjointed native cavalry regiments 

 which had been fighting on the royalist side. This regiment was, 

 however, of no avail ; peace was concluded between Great Britain 



