The following are the Resolutions of a Meeting adverted to in the preceding letter, and which was held "for considering the Facts relating to the Discovery of the Lamp of Safety."
"An advertisement having been inserted in the Newcastle Courant, of Saturday, November 7, 1817, purporting to contain the Resolutions of 'A Meeting held for the purpose of remunerating Mr. George Stephenson, for the valuable service he has rendered mankind by the invention of his Safety-lamp, which is calculated for the preservation of human life in situations of the greatest danger,'
"We have considered the evidence produced in various publications by Mr. Stephenson and his friends, in support of his claims; and having examined his lamps, and enquired into their effects in explosive mixtures, are clearly of opinion--
"First,--That Mr. George Stephenson _is not_ the author of the discovery of the fact, that an explosion of inflammable gas will not pass through tubes and apertures of small dimensions.
"Secondly,--That Mr. George Stephenson _was not_ the first to apply that principle to the construction of a Safety-lamp, none of the lamps which he made in the year 1815 having been safe, and there being no evidence even of their having been made upon that principle.
"Thirdly,--That Sir Humphry Davy not only discovered, independently of all others, and without any knowledge of the unpublished experiments of the late Mr. Tennant on Flame, the principle of the non-communication of explosions through small apertures, but that he has also the sole merit of having first applied it to the very important purpose of a Safety-lamp, which has evidently been imitated in the latest lamps of Mr. George Stephenson.
(Signed) "JOSEPH BANKS, P.R.S. "WILLIAM THOMAS BRANDE, "CHARLES HATCHETT, "WILLIAM HYDE WOLLASTON."
Thus terminated a controversy, the discussion of which, I am well aware, many of my readers will consider as having been protracted to a tedious, and perhaps to an unnecessary extent; but the biographer had no alternative. In passing it by without a notice, he would have violated his faith to the public, have given a tacit acknowledgment of the claims of Stephenson, and, in his judgment, have committed an act of gross injustice to the illustrious subject of his history; while by giving only an abridged statement, he would have furnished a pretext for doubt, and an opportunity for malevolence.