The dispute as to pointed conductors, or balls, was by no means brought to a termination by the decision that was come to regarding St. Paul’s. Endless pamphlets were published on the subject, and it went so far as to being turned into a political question. As priests scented heresy in the daring attempt to draw lightning from the clouds, so the court faction and ultra-conservatives of England smelt republicanism in the erection of iron rods designed by the representative of the disaffected American colonies. The king was understood to have given his own high opinion entirely against points, and in favour of balls, declaring his preference by ordering a cannon ball of large size to be placed on the top of a conductor erected over the royal palace at Kew. Meeting such high patronage, the ‘anti-Franklinians’ only sought an occasion to break out into open scientific warfare, and they were not long in finding it. On May 15, 1777, a large public building at Purfleet, on the Thames, serving as a storehouse for war material, was struck and greatly damaged by lightning, although protected by a pointed lightning conductor. Thereupon arose an instant outcry against the system advocated by Dr. Franklin. From much evidence adduced, there could be no doubt that the building at Purfleet had been hurt simply because the conductor was defective in parts, and was besides not laid deep enough into the ground; still this did not stop the clamour raised. Chiefly through the agitation of Mr. Wilson, the members of the Royal Society entered into hot discussions about the respective merits of pointed and round conductors. The feeling of the partisans of the latter side ran so high on this occasion, that Sir John Pringle had to resign the presidency of the Royal Society, which post he had ably filled since 1772, for making himself an advocate of points against balls. When the fever of the learned men had cooled down a little, it was resolved to settle the great question of points _versus_ balls by a series of experiments, to be held in the Pantheon, a large building in Oxford Street, dome-like in the interior. The arrangement, in fact, carried out under the direction of Mr. Wilson, leader of the ‘ball’ party, was to create an artificial thunderstorm--or, as it should properly be called, ‘lightning storm’--by means of powerful electrical batteries, to be discharged upon conductors of various forms. His Majesty George III., greatly interested in the subject, and cherishing fond hopes that cannon-balls would carry off the victory in the scientific dispute, as well as in the graver political one with Franklin’s countrymen, undertook to pay all the expenses of the Pantheon experiments, and they took place accordingly on an elaborate scale. But though prepared entirely with a view of showing the inefficiency of Dr. Franklin’s points, they proved absolutely the contrary. Artificial, like real, lightning clearly showed its preference for a lancet over a ball; it would glide down the former quietly, but fall heavily, mostly with an explosion, upon the latter. However, the question being in reality less a scientific controversy than a dispute arising from the fiery heat of political passions, it was by no means set at rest by the Pantheon trials. ‘Franklin rods’ were more than ever abhorred by a multitude of persons, learned and unlearned, after the great citizen of Philadelphia had set his hand, on July 4, 1776, to the declaration of independence of the ‘United States of America,’ and more than a quarter of a century had to elapse, a new generation of men growing up, before there arose clear and unimpassioned views about lightning conductors.