ard, would
have been allowed without comment: but it was not so. The member who
saves the public money always finds favour in the eyes of the people,
and therefore every member tries to save as much as he can, except when
he is himself a party concerned. And there was as much arguing and
objecting, and discussion of the merits of this man's claim, as there
would be in the English House of Commons at passing the Navy Estimates.
Eventually he lost it. The claims of the Fulton family were also
brought forward, when I was present, in the House of Representatives.
Fulton was certainly the father of steam-navigation in America, and to
his exertions and intelligence America may consider herself in a great
degree indebted for her present prosperity. It once required six or
seven months to ascend the Mississippi, a passage which is now performed
in fifteen days. Had it not been for Fulton's genius, the West would
still have remained a wild desert, and the now flourishing
cotton-growing States would not yet have yielded the crops which are the
staple of the Union. The claim of his surviving relatives was a mere
nothing, in comparison with the debt of gratitude owing to that great
man: yet member after member rose to oppose it with all the ingenuity of
argument. One asserted that the merit of the invention did not belong
to Fulton; another, that even if it did, his relatives certainly could
found no claim upon it; a third rose and declared that he would prove
that, so far from the government owing money to Fulton, Fulton was in
debt to the government. And thus did they go on, showing to their
constituents how great was their consideration for the public money, and
to the world (if another proof were required) how little gratitude is to
be found in a democracy. The bill was thrown out, and the race of
Fultons left to the chance of starving, for anything that the American
nation seemed to care to the contrary. Whitney, the inventor of the gin
for clearing the cotton of its seeds (perhaps the next greatest boon
ever given to America), was treated in the same way. And yet, on
talking over the question, there were few of the members who did not
individually acknowledge the justice of their claims, and the duty of
the State to attend to them: but the _majority_ would not have permitted
it, and when they went back to their constituents to be re-elected, it
would have been urged against them that they had voted away the public
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