ADVERTISEMENT.

SOME time after the opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Mr. Babbage published a work, entitled, The Exposition of 1851; or, Views of the Industry, the Science, and the Government of England. The twelfth chapter of this very miscellaneous jumble is headed, Intrigues of Science, and is chiefly devoted to a relation of the persecutions of which Mr. Babbage imagines himself to have been the object, and of which he supposes me to have been the director and manager.

A few months later, Sir James South, who is Mr. Babbage's intimate ally and tool, published a letter in the Mechanics' Magazine, in which he records certain conversations between himself and the late Mr. Troughton, about thirty years ago. I have some grounds for suspecting this publication to have been instigated by Mr. Babbage.

I did not hear of Mr. Babbage's attack upon me till some time after its publication, and it was in conversation with Mr. Airy that I first learned its nature. I was too much engaged at the moment to make a reply, and felt in no hurry about it, being assured that no well-informed person could give credence to such a tissue of absurd assertions, and still more absurd deductions. Perhaps I should have passed the matter over altogether, as not worth my attention, if Mr. Babbage had not sought a further occasion for discharging his spleen.

Having obtained, as he supposed, a sufficient corpus delicti in Sir James's published letter, Mr. Babbage took upon himself the grateful and congenial task of public prosecutor. He sent copies of the Mechanics' Magazine to the Councils of the Royal and of the Royal Astronomical Society, as a sort of impeachment; expecting, I suppose, that these bodies would take the matter up, and put me on my defence. The Council of the Astronomical Society, to whom Sir James and I were both well known, and who had also had, not long before, a striking proof that the Mechanics' Magazine is not precisely a trustworthy authority, slighted the affair. I can speak less confidently of the Council of the Royal, but I know that no explanation was asked of me.

Baffled in these attempts, Mr. Babbage brought forward the substance of Sir James's letter, as a charge against me at the meeting of the Board of Greenwich Visitors in June 1853, and I then learned, for the first time, what I was accused of. My reply was necessarily short and uncircumstantial; but while I admitted

that I had, thirty years ago, introduced a foreign instrument without payment of duty, I denied, in the flattest and least civil language, the truth of the rest of Sir James's story; and I believe that the gentlemen who heard me had no doubt of my veracity.

At the last Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society, Mr. Babbage was allowed to read the letter from the Mechanics' Magazine, and to ask for an explanation! This I proceeded to give, but was stopped just as I was proceeding to show the incompatibility of Sir James's present story with the whole of his previous conduct.

In the present letter I have shown, I think, circumstantially and conclusively, the patent falsehood of Sir James South's reminiscences. I have entered into more detail than is necessary for those who know both parties, but it is my duty to the gentlemen whom I am proud to call my friends, to justify their confidence in me as completely as lies within my power. If a libeller puts his libel into the mouth of a dead man, and asserts that the conversation took place between the two, I see no possibility of doing more than I have done. I deny the truth of the story, I show that the witness is unworthy, and I point out that he is contradicted by his own subsequent conduct, and by the whole life of his supposed informant. I beg of any one, who has still any doubt left, to inquire from those who know Sir James and me, what is our relative authority.

I attribute Mr. Babbage's blundering pertinacity to a diseased mind, and I believe this conclusion is far from being confined to myself. I should be glad to make the same excuse for Sir James South; but I must frankly own that his conduct is not repugnant to his character, and though he has shown more boldness than I gave him credit for, I attribute this rather to a defect in apprehension than to a superfluity of courage. The Mechanics' Magazine is labouring in its vocation, and suiting its wares to its customers; and yet I think this journal, too, had its own inducement.

I have thought it best, while I was engaged with Mr. Babbage as the instigator, bottle-holder, advertiser, and placard-bearer of Sir James, to settle our own private dispute. For the honour of Cambridge (though I scarcely allow him to be pur sang), I hope he will state more truly and argue more logically in his reply, if he makes one, than he has done in his assault.

I regret that my justification has required me to quote conversations with persons now deceased. It must be remembered that the publication of a conversation supposed to have been held with the late Mr. Troughton, is the cause of my troubling the public at all.

R. SHEEPSHANKS.

Athenæum, Nov. 25, 1854.

A LETTER, &c.

THE members of the Board of Greenwich Visitors, who were present at the meeting in 1853, will remember that Mr. Babbage brought certain charges against me, founded on a letter by Sir James South, published in the Mechanics' Magazine. It will also be remembered that I gave the most positive denial, and in the least courteous terms, to the graver part of those charges, declaring them to be the simple invention of Sir James South and without any foundation. I do not complain, but the Board surely may, that no notice was given either to me or to them of this intended attack, and that no copy of Sir James South's letter was produced: this want of business-like conduct on the part of Mr. Babbage wasted a great deal of our time and rendered the discussion less specific and satisfactory than it might have been, had I previously known the nature of the charges. I do not think any of the gentlemen present doubted my statements, and even Mr. Babbage himself, if capable of reflection, must have seen that his prejudices had warped his judgment.

At the subsequent Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society, however, Mr. Babbage renewed his assault, and now read the letter of Sir James South, requesting, if I remember correctly, that the President would call upon me for an explanation. This, after some interruption and confusion, I proceeded to give; but as the language I happened to use, though appropriate and parliamentary, was not sufficiently honied to suit the tastes of several gentlemen present, who had heard me charged with an attempt to suborn perjury without being at all shocked, I was stopped in my defence just as I was entering on the most essential part, which would scarcely have occupied three minutes.

The Bye-laws of the Royal Society direct that any charge against a Fellow of the Royal Society shall be brought before the Council, and Mr. Babbage had already attempted this course with the Councils of the Royal and the Royal Astronomical Societies, but without success. He might, perhaps, have legally moved a vote of censure on the Council of the Royal Society for neglecting his accusation: his actual proceeding was entirely irregular and contrary to law as well as to good manners. (See Appendix, No. I.)

* I did know that Sir James South had attacked me in the Mechanics' Magazine, but I had not seen the letter nor had any idea of its contents (further than that it related to my introducing an instrument without payment of duty), until Mr. Babbage enlightened me.

I am not going to make a great grief of this unjust and ungentlemanlike behaviour of some members of the Royal Society (for harsh as the term may seem, a denial of justice is ungentlemanlike), but I must say that I feel nearly as much ashamed for them as I am indignant for myself. A gross breach of the law was permitted, a grave accusation was made, and the answer, which would have shown the absurdity of the accusation, was cut short by misplaced and cowardly delicacy. I was told, indeed, by several gentlemen, that any further defence was unnecessary, that I had sufficiently exposed the improbability of Sir J. South's assertions, and that I might be quite satisfied no one believed him. Supposing all this to be true (and yet we know how often, when dirt is boldly thrown, a little will stick), I cannot help feeling that I did not deserve the treatment I received; and I must express my belief that an ordinary meeting of mechanics would not have allowed an inoffensive member to be thus attacked, in clear breach of their own regulations, on any such trumpery grounds at all: still less would they have interrupted his defence.

I have no intention, however, of establishing a feud with the Royal Society, or any part of it; and having protested against their conduct towards myself, and against the precedent, I will proceed to state the charges brought against me by Messrs. Babbage and South, with my explanation and defence.

Sir James South's letter was published in the Mechanics' Magazine, January 24, 1852, and is as follows :

"IN RE BABBAGE V. SHEEPSHANKS.

"If this be not subornation of perjury, it is very like it.'—Mech. May., Jan. 17, 1852.

"Sir,-The perusal of the able article in your Journal, from which the above extract is taken, has called to my mind a parallel instance of quasi-subornation of perjury, which you may, perhaps, deem not unworthy a corner in your pages, illustrating as it does very strongly, how British workmen are but too often injured in their reputation by foreign counterfeits, and how the practice derives encouragement from the low state of moral feeling prevailing as well among scientific (or rather pseudo-scientific) as among fashionable circles.

"For very many years I was on terms of the closest intimacy with the late Mr. Troughton. Calling, as was my habit, almost every day, I found him on one occasion in a state of great agitation. I asked him 'What was the matter?' He said, • That fellow, Dick has just left; he has been abroad, and has brought from Paris one of Jecker's circles: he tells me, "that to avoid payment of duty for it, he has had the name of 'Troughton' engraved on it;" and he has asked me "to let one of my workmen go down to the Custom-house, and clear it for him as an English instrument." I told him I would rather cut off my right hand than be concerned in such a rascally transaction: and from what

he said, I am not sure if W.

is not as deep in the mud as Dick is in the mire.' I replied, 'I hope not.' Mr. Troughton then said, 'I told the fellow, if he wanted to rob the Revenue by perjury, he must get some other person to help him; and he went away in great dudgeon.'

"Some few days afterwards, calling on my old friend Troughton, I crossed him in the passage, between his shop and his parlour, as he was coming down-stairs. Taking me by the hand, he led me to the window at the further part of the room, and bowing to the window-sill, he introduced me, with a look of contempt which I shall never forget, to a circle which was lying there. He put it into my hands, saying, 'It was the Jecker's Circle which S- had got from the Custom-house, but whether by swearing to a lie himself, or by having gotten some one to swear to a lie for him, he did not know.' He pointed to the name of 'Troughton' engraved on it, and said, 'The imitation was a very good one, and the fellow was an expert forger.'

“I am, Sir, yours, &c.

"Observatory, Kensington, July 19, 1852."

"JAMES SOUTH.

The shallow cunning with which Sir James attempts to avoid the responsibility of his libel would not have saved him if it had been worth my while to prosecute; but the attempt is a sample of the happy manner in which his spite is tempered by cowardice and folly.

There is, generally speaking, this difference between a true story and a false one, that the first can bear a close sifting and examination, while the latter, unless it is the work of a master, can not. Sir James South is no Defoe, nor has he the proverbially necessary gift of a long memory.

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An insinuation is clearly made in the first paragraph that I wanted to affix a fraudulent value to a second-rate instrument, by attaching Troughton's name to it. How, then, did the instrument come into Troughton's hands? Surely he was the very last person to whom I should have sent it, if I had wished to pass it under his name, and to the "injury of his reputation." I may also ask, in what way could I merit the designation of an expert forger?" I could not engrave the spurious inscription, for I was in England all the time; but if I had been in Paris, how could I have taught a French engraver to write like an English one? Troughton's name was (I think) rightly spelt-rather a remarkable thing-but the writing was altogether and unmistakeably French.

That the language attributed to Troughton is "arrant South," and quite different from his own genuine Anglo-Saxon, is no solid objection to the general truth of the story. Sir James could no more copy, or even recite, the ipsissima verba of his "revered friend," than Dr. Johnson could make little fishes talk any language but that of big whales. Sir James, professing to quote "the very