Henry Cort

It is somewhat a departure from our usual course to make the leading columns of this journal the medium for laying before the British public the claims and grievances of individuals. To persons in the situation suggested doors of our law-courts are open; there is the remedy by petition to Parliament; finally there is the public press. The conductors of any respectable journal are at all times ready to give insertion in the form of a letter to any well-authenticated complaint; indeed, no inconsiderable share of our own daily labour consists in considering and disposing of applications of this description. When an aggrieved person is admitted to make his own story known in this form, of course he, and he alone, is held answerable for the substantial truth of his statement. It is quite another matter when a case is "taken up," as the ordinary phrase runs, in the leading columns of a public journal, for such a step would no doubt imply, without special notice to the contrary, that the facts had been carefully investigated, the alleged grievances duly considered, and that the credit and character of the journal were to a certain extent involved in the truth of the story.

Now with reference to the case which we are about to bring under the notice of our readers, and which is the subject of an advertisement in our columns today, we would begin by disclaiming the faintest shadow of responsibility. We have not investigated the truth of the allegations to which we are about to advert, nor, indeed as they refer to scientific matters, and to secret passages of the scandalous history of England 60 years ago, do we esteem ourselves competent to conduct an inquiry of that description. We wish merely that others should know, as we know, the story of Henry Cort, the father of the British Iron Trade: that is, that they should cast a glance over this brief abstract of a petition which his destitute family have presented to the House of Commons. This petition has been forwarded to us, and the allegations it contains are so completely of a national character that, for once, we violate a general and necessary rule, and have determined to give to them all the publicity in our power. Time was, some 70 years ago, that England was dependent upon Sweden and Russia for her supply of wrought iron. Henry Cort, of Gosport in the county of Southampton, an iron manufacturer, invented, and secured by patent, in the years 1783-4, two processes which relieved us from this commercial servitude, and liberated for the use of English manufacturers the supplies of iron which are stored up so profusely under the surface of these islands. "The first process effected the cheap manufacture of wrought iron by the use of pit coal in the puddling furnace; the second process, which was rolling this cheap wrought iron through grooved rollers, enabled the manufacturer to produce 20 tons of bar iron in the same time and with the same labour previously required to manipulate one ton of an inferior quality by the tedious operation of forging under the hammer."

This allegation is given in the words of the petition. Before the year 1785, when iron was, comparatively speaking, but slightly used for commercial, maritime, or social purposes, we paid annually to Sweden something like £1,500,000 for wrought iron. Then came the war, came commercial embarrassment, depreciated paper, foreign prohibitions, and an overpowering and increasing demand for more and more iron. The inventions of Henry Cort carried us easily through this period of sharp trial, and, as his descendants allege, were the principal cause of our success. It would indeed be impossible to exaggerate the advantages resulting from an unlimited supply of "the precious metal." The only points for consideration in this case are whether, first, to Henry Cort, and to him alone, the credit is due of enabling us to draw upon Vulcan at sight; and, secondly, whether he did not obtain all the remuneration to which he was fairly entitled by receipts from his patents, and so forth.

Now, upon the first point, we are bound to declare that Mr. Cort's son has succeeded in obtaining the signatures of the most eminent engineers and ironmasters in England to the petition in which he sets forth his father's claims to be considered as the exclusive author of the improvements in the manufacture of iron. The point is one upon which hostile criticism is very desirable, but until such very powerful attestation as we see incorporated in this petition is disproved there is no doubt a very violent presumption that Henry Cort, of Gosport, is entitled to be considered as the Tubal Cain of our century and of our country.

The history of Henry Cort's ruin we can not altogether disentangle from the allegations of the petition. The most condensed account of it is to be found in the 58th paragraph, page 19 of the petition: "That for these unparalleled services Henry Cort derived no remuneration. He expended a private fortune exceeding £20,000 in bringing his patent processes to complete perfection. When that was achieved, and the leading ironmasters of the kingdom had, as related, signed contracts to pay him 10 shillings per ton for their use, his patents were seized by a high Officer of the Crown, holding the responsible and lucrative posts of Treasurer of the Navy and Secretary at War, and under an extent obtained by the perjury of a confidential deputy his freeholds at Fontley, Fareham and Gosport, valued, with the stock and goodwill of a lucrative trade, at £39,000, were handed over to the son of a public defaulter in that Treasurer's office. No account of these proceedings against Cort was ever obtained either before his death in 1800 or afterwards." Two or three years elapsed from the time that Henry Cort had disappeared from the scene, and Parliament appointed a commission of Naval Inquiry to examine into the charges against the financial department of the navy. It appears that the Treasurer and his confidential deputy a few weeks before the sitting of the commission indemnified each other by a joint release, and agreed to burn their accounts for something approaching to a million and a half of the public money which had passed through their hands. In this general conflagration all the evidence by which Henry Cort's case could have been established perished, and the culprits refused to answer any questions which would have criminated themselves. As far as we can make out of the story, Henry Cort was involved in the ruin of a public defaulter with whose crimes he was not in any degree concerned. He, as the only solvent person connected with any transactions in which this person was involved, was made to pay to the extent of his last shilling. It is probable, indeed, that from his royalties, and receipts under his patents, Cort or his representatives could have satisfied all claims. Time, however, was denied him, and the simpler plan adopted of ruining him and his descendants outright, and at once. The influence of the culprits and the exigencies of political life forbade all hope of raising the question in Parliament at any subsequent period.

Such is the brief outline of this remarkable case, and thus much we will venture to say: if the statements of Henry Cort's son turn out on investigation to be true, he and his sisters are well entitled to some mark of the public gratitude. We can not pretend to encumber our columns with the calculations which are inserted in the petition as to the amount to which the national wealth has been increased by Cort's processes in the manufacture of iron. Let anyone think of our iron fleet, iron gunboats, iron mercantile marine, iron railways, iron engines, iron cotton mills, iron suspension and tubular bridges, iron batteries, iron palaces, etc., and then ask himself what should be the measure of public gratitude to the descendants of a man who endowed his country with such an amount of wealth and power. While others have, upon the strength of Henry Cort's discoveries, been raised to the position of millionaires, his children are almost starving. We should be ashamed for the honour of England to mention the amount of the pension which has been conceded to them by the Crown and Parliament. It is about equal in amount to the wages of a domestic servant of the humblest description, and even this has been made subject to deductions. For the sake of our national credit, it behoves all persons of influence in the country to give the case of Henry Cort's children their immediate consideration. In bringing the subject under their notice our duty is discharged.

"Others have, upon the strength of Henry Cort's discoveries, been raised to the position of millionaires"

Cyfarthfa Castle, built for Richard Crawshay's grandson in 1825