many conferences, in which I endeavoured to evince what he has at last
confessed in the narrative of his life, the uncertainty and inefficacy
of his method.

About the year 1729, my subscribers explained my pretensions to the
lords of the Admiralty, and the lord Torrington declared my claim just
to the reward assigned, in the last clause of the act, to those who
should make discoveries conducive to the perfection of the art of
sailing. This he pressed with so much warmth, that the commissioners
agreed to lay my tables before Sir Isaac Newton, who excused himself, by
reason of his age, from a regular examination: but when he was informed
that I held the variation at London to be still increasing; which he and
the other philosophers, his pupils, thought to be then stationary, and
on the point of regression, he declared that he believed my system
visionary. I did not much murmur to be for a time overborne by that
mighty name, even when I believed that the name only was against me: and
I have lived till I am able to produce, in my favour, the testimony of
time, the inflexible enemy of false hypotheses; the only testimony which
it becomes human understanding to oppose to the authority of Newton.

My notions have, indeed, been since treated with equal superciliousness
by those who have not the same title to confidence of decision; men who,
though, perhaps, very learned in their own studies, have had little
acquaintance with mine. Yet even this may be borne far better than the
petulance of boys, whom I have seen shoot up into philosophers by
experiments which I have long since made and neglected, and by
improvements which I have so long transferred into my ordinary practice,
that I cannot remember when I was without them.

When Sir Isaac Newton had declined the office assigned him, it was given
to Mr. Molineux, one of the commissioners of the Admiralty, who engaged
in it with no great inclination to favour me; but, however, thought one
of the instruments, which, to confirm my own opinion, and to confute Mr.
Whiston's, I had exhibited to the Admiralty, so curious or useful, that
he surreptitiously copied it on paper, and clandestinely endeavoured to
have it imitated by a workman for his own use.

This treatment naturally produced remonstrances and altercations, which,
indeed, did not continue long, for Mr. Molineux died soon afterwards;
and my proposals were for a time forgotten.

I will not, however, accuse him of design