]

I am no lawyer, as I observed before, and therefore I do not pretend to
pass an opinion on the details of the foregoing remarks; but of the
results produced by their system, I certainly can speak, for I have seen
property transferred without the slightest trouble, and for a few
shillings, which, owing to the amount involved, and the complications
connected with it, would, if transferred in this country, have kept the
firm of Screw, Skinflint, and Stickem hard at work for mouths, and when
finished, would have required a week to make up the bill of costs, &c.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote CG: I suppose originated _from the Deity_ is
intended.--H.A.M.]

[Footnote CH: Communicated to me by Mr. J.G. Dodson, son of the Right
Honourable Sir J. Dodson, Dean of the Arches, &c.]

CHAPTER XXIX.

_Inventions and Inveighings.--Palquam qui meruit ferat._

Writing about law makes one litigious; so I seize this opportunity for
making a few observations on American claims. I am not going to open the
question of the Bay of Fundy, &c., fisheries; because British liberality
has resigned a right, the retention of which was a source of continual
irritation to our republican neighbours. I must, however, quote a few
lines from the work of their able Chancellor, Kent, to show how fully
justified we were in claiming the sovereignty of the Bay of Fundy. If
the Chancellor's work on the Law of Nations is consulted, it will be
found that he points out to his countrymen their right to the
sovereignty of lines stretching "from Cape Anne to Cape Cod, Nantucket
to Montauck Point, thence to the Capes of the Delaware, and _from the
South Cape of Florida to the Mississippi."_ With such wholesale claims
asserted on their part, it would require something more than modest
assurance to dispute England's right to the Bay of Fundy. But my
litigation with the Republic is respecting some of their claims to
inventions, which they put forward in so barefaced a manner, that the
unwary or the uninquiring--which two sections of the human family
constitute the great majority--are constantly misled into a belief of
their truth; and the citizens of the Republic would do well to remember,
that by putting forward unwarrantable pretensions to some discoveries,
they afford just grounds for questioning their lawful claims to others.

The first I shall mention is with reference to Fulton and steam. Mr.
Charles King, the President of Columbia College, in a lecture