every purpose, be incapable of comprehending the properties of this neat machine, called Morey's Re volving Engine?

But as I claim a right to use this engine in navigating the waters of New York, I could not well expect you gratuitously to notice its good operation in that instance, nor in another on Merimack river (often mentioned before,) but might have rather expected you would dwell with pleasure on the issue of our Connecticut enterprize. You are indeed entitled here to some little vexation, as it has already cost you more than the rest of us. Nor is it perhaps unaccountable that a noble machine which still exists was in the furnace of your anger, converted to a mass of "old iron, and sold in New York."

The manner in which you have thought proper in conformity to your principles of policy to draw atten tion to this affair gives it a slight degree of consequence. A number of enterprizing gentlemen joined me in the construction of a steam boat which they determined to run to New York if the Legislature of the State would protect them-And although a Bill was matured and accepted unanimously, it was postponed out of respect to the Assembly of your State. The Company was discouraged, and the boat laid up after plying for the season between Hartford and Saybrook. It is true she did not run on an average over six miles an hour. The addition of another small boiler was alone however requisite to the common speed. But the want of the protecting law since given to other citizens, discouraged all the proprietors except myself: but for reasons extraneous to the merits of the boat, they chose to sell-I could not but consent. But I repurchased the principal part of the engine.

Your curiosity may be interested to know what became of it? To answer satisfactorily I must carry your recollection back, notwithstanding its repugnance, to that contemptible patent of mine, the steam tow boat which your friend Mr. Fulton paid me the

compliment of claiming as his ozun. It was however soon got into good operation in Georgia and South Carolina. The patent was recognized by act of Legislature and the term of duration conditionally extended. It is indeed the mode of using steam power not only best adapted to the southern rivers where the great bulk of transportation is with the current, but wherever the tide favours navigation. It had long been my design to occupy those rivers in the winter months with steam boats used on the Hudson in the summer

season.

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We constructed a boat in Boston and made our passage to Charleston, but too late in the autumn for the greatest success: we had previously built the tow boats-so that in fact the same engine that you confounded with the old iron, towed loads of merchandize up the Santee against its heavy freshes the last winter, bringing down large quantities of cotton. there any reason why such steam boats should not operate well on the Hudson? Was it fair to give the unfounded colouring you have to the issue of the enterprize in Connecticut? Does the speed of a vessel affect the principle? or does it depend on some proportion between the power and the load? The performance of the same engine was abundantly good in Carolina by as much increase of boiler, as was requisite in Connecticut,

No machine or invention is at once perfect. James Watt was a good many years in bringing his engine to the degree of perfection that it attained-So were a number of other inventors whose works still divide the field of usefulness with him-The elements are the same-But the distinctive principle of their engines, whether it be of economy, simplicity, lightness, peculiar adaptation to mines, manufactories, rail roads, and navigation,-whatever they are, or whatever American ingenuity may produce, according to the doctrine of monopoly, the State of New York is to content itself for sixteen years to come, with steam

boats on the old plan and most expensive scale, confined to one branch of business, and on the terms your generous incorporation may please to tax.

You had the ingenuity to perceive I had been disappointed in the issue of my efforts in Connecticut, but would not charitably admit even to yourself that even in that instance I was essentially successful. I know it is not uncommon for those who have been nursed on the lap of Fortune to think capacity cannot exist where she sometimes frowns. But it is a hazardous prejudice to indulge in this changeful world. Indeed I wonder not a little that you should have laid so much stress on this incident. It evinces from some cause or other, a defect of memory. I have not surely been the only unsuccessful mechanician within your knowledge. Chancellor Livingston himself it appears, suggested to the Legislature that he possessed a new and superior mode of propulsion-so extraordinary as to warrant an act of injustice (in the Governor's opinion) on the part of the assembly. But you are not ignorant that the Chancellor's horizontal wheel and steam boat did not succeed.

Nor was he alone thus unfortunate. Mr. Fulton too was far more fortunate than successful, as appears by your own narrative of his surprising life. He did not succeed with his steam boat in Paris;-You state in effect that he as an American citizen (not having been naturalized in France, otherwise than by submitting to those humiliating repulses and mortifications incident to a solicitation and attendance on the accidentally great) obtains of Napoleon money and surveillance to carry into effect that cruel machine which one Dr. Bushnell of some place in Connecticut invented in the time of our Revolution for submarine explosions, but probably rather intended for alarm than destruction. It is true the English were at peace with America and in the most intimate commercial and friendly relations however he did not succeed but if by good luck he had, perhaps you would have eulogised

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it, as an achievement in anticipation of the war which took place ten years later with his own country; but which he would have always regretted.

Having fortunately escaped his patron, (who was apt to be impatient of disappointment,) perhaps justly irritated with the circumstances you relate, he offers the same apparatus to the British ministry, and again after much vexatious solicitation, they accede, try, and reject it. I confess it would have been a fortunate triumph if it could have been made successful in one instance, against the proud islanders in their turn, when war surprised New York defenceless. At that alarming moment our citizens were pleased with the notion that the enemy might in our waters be paralized as with the touch of a torpedo. It is true every facility appears to have been afforded on that occasion, but still without success.-And the very respectable committee appointed by government report that none of the usual means of defence are to be omitted on account of this invention.

Far be it from me sir to disparage the energy and enterprise of the subject of your biography. We know that the best designs and the greatest undertakings often and generally do fail of success for the want of funds-sometimes from unforeseen difficulties-accidents, and as lawyers say, acts of God.But none of these causes seem to have impeded the success of torpedo war.

Perhaps no one more truly appreciates the patience perseverance and decision of character that were evinced by Mr. Fulton in the prosecution of mechanical pursuits, of inherent difficulty. The wish is not peculiar to myself, that his eulogium had been bounded by those characteristics that did him honour and to the limits first given it-as its enlargement to a book seemed to be calculated for an effect more favorable to monopoly than to his glory. His real usefulness, his genius and taste, his virtues and generosity-his love of science and the arts were fair topics of enco

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mium.-But as the life of General Greene, one of the most interesting characters of the Revolution is but just written :-And the life of Hamilton, now generally acknowledged almost the greatest man of the age, not even yet!!-the purpose at the time could not be mistaken.

Your book certainly sir had some effect in preventing the admission of patentees upon the waters of the State, and you will therefore excuse me that I could never cordially join in those pæans, which seemed as injurious to my rights as they were repugnant to my judgment.

Trusting that we shall be in accord in this one point, that non-success is not always the proof of a want of skill and knowledge; I beg leave to recur to another point in your letter: the patents of Mr. Fulton. When you speak, with a view to depreciate all other forms of the steam engine, of the plans and patents of Mr. Fulton carried into effect by a skilful mechanic or engineer in the instance of the steam ship, I understand that a powerful double stroke condensing engine as improved by Watt, is used.

I had thought ever since the public inquiry before the Legislature of New Jersey, of which an interesting account will be republished by Mr. Stockton-and to which I beg leave to refer you, that Mr. Fulton's friends had ceased to rely on, or even to speak of his patents, as of the least validity or consequence :though I now recollect that in Mr. Duer's Reply to your pamphlet, entitled a vindication of the monopoly, some little notice of the subject is thought necessary-it almost supercedes the occasion of remark. Permit me to refer you to the 82d page, and as far as the 89th, and to a copy of the specification in the appendix:-Indeed I have sought in the laws of Congress in vain for the authority on which a patent for a combination of things either invented by other persons-found in books-or not in themselves patentable, might be taken out. But if the owner of inventions already