is fit for service. Henry Cort made us
masters of ourselves in this respect, by the
invention of two processes, for which he took
out patents seventy-two years ago. His first
invention is known as the puddling furnace,
wherein, since its discovery until this day,
wrought iron has been manufactured chiefly
by the flame of pit-coal. The second invention
was a system of grooved rollers, through
which the iron was passed after it had been
wrought in the puddling furnace, and by
which the manufacturer was enabled to
produce twenty tons of bar-iron, in the
time and with the labour previously
required to manipulate one ton of inferior
quality, by the tedious operation of forging
under the hammer.

That a Henry Cort, of Gosport, was the
author of this system of working iron which
has prevailed among us since his time, never
was questioned; and the affirmation is now
strengthened by the testimony of the most
eminent iron-masters and engineers. It is
also certain that this system has been of an
advantage to this country that leads to
extravagant results when we attempt, however
soberly, to calculate it. Seventy years ago
the use of iron was what, in comparison with
the use made of it in later days, may be
called insignificant; but, even then we paid
to Sweden alone for wrought iron, about a
million and a half a-year. The great war
that followed Cort's inventions sorely tried
the British pocket, and it was attended with
increased demands for iron. Had we been
forced in the war-time to go abroad for it,
and buy it at war-prices, it is not easy to say
how much greater our financial difficulties
would have been. Let us be content to
record that sober people have propounded
figures which appear to show a gain to this
country, by the inventions that enabled us to
work up our own iron, equal by this time to
one hundred millions. Meanwhile, other
inventions, and not a few of the useful arts,
have been promoted by the free supply of
wrought iron, for which we have to thank
the happy wit of Henry Cort—who spent, let
us add, not only wit on his researches, but a
private fortune of some twenty thousand
pounds.

Surely a discovery of such importance,
made at such cost, must have brought to its
author fame and wealth as his reward! Mr.
Cort patented the processes which would
certainly be used by every man concerned in
the trade they were so vastly to extend;
and he made terms with the chief iron-
masters, who signed contracts to pay him ten
shillings a ton for the use of his discoveries.
In the simple and just course of things, a
great reward was on the point of following a
greater service to the country. But, this
country has a government which is a kind of
torpedo in its dealings with ingenious people.
Clever men who take patents out, because in
doing so they are obliged to put their hands
into the water occupied by this torpedo,
suffer benumbing shocks, which vary in
severity according to the closeness of the
contact. Passive injustice, wrong by
indifference to right, is now supposed to be the
power that can strike strong arms with
palsy, or faint hearts with death. Seventy
years ago, injustice on the part of men in
power was not passive only; wrong often
was done in actual defiance of right.
Mr. Cort having taken out his patents, they
were, for a mysterious reason, seized by the
Treasurer of the Navy, who was at the same
time Secretary at War, and who, helped by
the perjury of a confidential deputy, seized
also the victim's freeholds at Foutley, Fareham
and Gosport, valued, with the stock
and goodwill of a lucrative trade, at thirty-
nine thousand pounds, and caused them to
be handed over to the son of a public
defaulter in the Navy Office!

To an incident like this, of course there
belong secret passages; but, to whose
discredit any more disclosure would have been,
we may judge clearly enough from two facts.
One of them is, that before Cort died, a ruined
man, fifty-six years ago, no account of the
proceedings taken against him ever was
obtained. The other is, that two or three years
after his death, parliament appointed a
commission to inquire into charges against the
financial department of the Navy, and it then
appeared that a few weeks before the sitting
of the commission, the Treasurer and his
deputy indemnified each other by a joint
release, and agreed to burn their accounts
for upwards of a million and a half of public
money which had passed (or not passed)
through their hands. With the accounts, they
burnt also all papers having reference to Mr.
Cort's case; having done which, they refused
to answer questions that would criminate
themselves. So, the man who added scores of
millions to his country's wealth, died ruined,
and bequeathed to his nine children nothing
but beggary. A son has now grown old in
indigence, his years exceed three-score and
ten, and it is only now, at last,—sick, infirm,
troubled with care about the means of life,—
that he hears some men talking of the
justice due to those who bear their father's
name. The daughters have a pension.

Ah, then we are not so ungrateful!
Something has been done towards making reparation
for the wrong done to their house. Yes,
something. They receive a pension of nineteen
pounds a-year!

In the first place, however, it should be
said, that—about ten years after the death of
their benefactor—the members of the iron-
trade raised a small sum for the relief of his
distressed widow and children. Forty-one
firms subscribed and paid to Mr. Cort's
family a small but decent sum: being about a
twentieth part of a farthing in the pound,
upon the profit they had made of Mr. Cort's
inventions.