The dangers which inventors have frequently to encounter are very great. Among many instances we may mention the following:—
Mr. Day perished in a diving bell, or diving boat of his own construction, at Plymouth, in June, 1774, in which he was to have continued for a wager, twelve hours, one hundred feet deep in water, and probably, perished from his not possessing all the hydrostatic knowledge that was necessary. Mr. Spalding was professionally ingenious in the art of constructing and managing the diving bell, he had practised the business many years with success. He went down, accompanied by one of his young men, twice to view the wreck of the Imperial East Indiaman, at Kish Bank, in Ireland; on descending the third time, in June, 1783, they remained about an hour under water, and had two barrels of air sent down to them, but on the signals from below not being repeated, after a certain time, they were drawn up by their assistants, and both found dead in the bell.
BRIBERY.
The triumphant exposure and punishments of corrupt bribe-takers on a grand scale belongs to the close of the seventeenth century. In 1695 Sir John Trevor, the Speaker of the House of Commons, was compelled to put the question himself that he should be expelled. A bill for securing the right application to poor orphans of freemen of London of funds belonging to them could not be carried without purchasing the support of influential members and of the Speaker himself, at a bribe for the latter of 1,000 guineas!
Sir Thomas Cook, the governor of the East India Company, paid £167,000 in one year for bribes to members of the House, of which Sir Basil Firebrace took for his share £40,000. Corruption was universal, therefore deemed venial.
LEGALISED GAMBLING.
The following statement shows the extent to which lotteries encouraged a spirit of gambling among the people, and we may hence appreciate the soundness of the policy which dictated their suppression:—
The Post Boy of December 27, says:—"We are informed that the Parliamentary Lottery will be fixed in this manner:—150,000 tickets will be delivered out at 10l. each ticket, making in all the sum of 1,500,000l. sterling; the principal whereof is to be sunk, the Parliament allowing nine per cent. interest for the whole during the term of 32 years, which interest is to be divided as follows: 3,750 tickets will be prizes from 1,000l. to 5l. per annum during the said 32 years; all the other tickets will be blanks, so that there will be 39 of these to one prize, but then each blank ticket will be entitled to fourteen shillings a year for the term of 32 years, which is better than an annuity for life at ten per cent. over and above the chance of getting a prize." Such was the eagerness of the publick in subscribing to the above profitable scheme, that Mercers'-hall was literally crowded, and the Clerks were found incompetent to receive the influx of names. 600,000l. was subscribed January 21; and on the 28th of February, the sum of 1,500,000l. was completed.
ONE OF THE EFFECTS OF MANUFACTURES.
How greatly does the introduction of a manufacturing establishment into a town where none previously existed, alter its whole character and condition!