bury
Place, Islingtonn, on the 30th August, 1789, after a fortnight's
illness.

[9] This is confirmed by the report of a House of Commons Committee on
the subject Mr. Davies Gilbert chairman, in which they say, "Your
committee have not been able to satisfy themselves that either of the
two inventions, one for subjecting cast-iron to an operation termed
puddling during its conversion to malleable iron, and the other for
passing it through fluted or grooved rollers, were so novel in their
principle or their application as fairly to entitle the petitioners
[Mr. Cort's survivors] to a parliamentary reward." It is, however,
stated by Mr. Mushet that the evidence was not fairly taken by the
committee--that they were overborne by the audacity of Mr. Samuel
Homfray, one of the great Welsh ironmasters, whose statements were
altogether at variance with known facts--and that it was under his
influence that Mr. Gilbert drew up the fallacious report of the
committee. The illustrious James Watt, writing to Dr. Black in 1784,
as to the iron produced by Cort's process, said, "Though I cannot
perfectly agree with you as to its goodness, yet there is much
ingenuity in the idea of forming the bars in that manner, which is the
only part of his process which has any pretensions to novelty.... Mr.
Cort has, as you observe, been most illiberally treated by the trade:
they are ignorant brutes; but he exposed himself to it by showing them
the process before it was perfect, and seeing his ignorance of the
common operations of making iron, laughed at and despised him; yet they
will contrive by some dirty evasion to use his process, or such parts
as they like, without acknowledging him in it. I shall be glad to be
able to be of any use to him. Watts fellow-feeling was naturally
excited in favour of the plundered inventor, he himself having all his
life been exposed to the attacks of like piratical assailants.

[10] Tenth Report of the Commissioners of Naval Inquiry. See also
Report of Select Committee on the 10th Naval Report. May, 1805.

[11] Mr. Mushet says of the early manufacture of iron at Merthyr Tydvil
that "A modification of the charcoal refinery, a hollow fire, was
worked with coke as a substitute for charcoal, but the bar-iron
hammered from the produce was very inferior." The pit-coal cast-iron
was nevertheless found of a superior quality for castings, being more
fusible and more homogeneous than charcoal-iron. Hence it was w