ion was, that Mr. Cooke was entitled to stand alone as the
gentleman to whom Great Britain is indebted for having practically
introduced and carried out the telegraph as a useful undertaking;
Professor Wheatstone's profound and successful researches having already
prepared the public to receive it.--So much for the justice of the
American claim to the invention, which, like steam, has been the produce
of many heads, and was brought into practical use first by Cooke, then
by Stienhiel in Germany, and lastly by Morse in America.

Another invention of which the public have heard no little discussion
lately is the reaping machine. To the American nation doubtless belongs
the credit of forcing it into notice and into use; but as for any claim
to the invention, it is equally certain they have none. That honour is
due solely to the Rev. Patrick Bell, a Scotch minister in the presbytery
of Arbroath. He first tried his reaping machine in August, 1828, at his
father's farm on Lord Airlie's estate, where it has been in yearly use
ever since; and in October he exhibited it at the Highland Society's
meeting at Glasgow. The principle upon which his first machine was made
differs in nothing from those making at this hour; and, as some of the
people employed on his father's farm migrated to America, it is only
reasonable to suppose they carried sufficient information with them to
explain the machine. American ingenuity soon copied, and American energy
soon gave an impulse to, Mr. Bell's machine, for which, though denying
them the invention, we ought not to deny them our thanks.

But while I thus explain the unwarrantable claims which Americans have
set forth, I must not allow John Bull to lay the flattering unction to
his soul that none of his claimed discoveries are disputed on the other
side of the Atlantic, I have seen a _Book of Facts_ printed in America,
which charges us with more than one geographical robbery in the Arctic
Seas, in which regions, it is well known, American enterprise and
sympathy have been most nobly employed. As I am incapable of balancing
the respective claims, I leave that subject to the Hydrographer's office
of the two countries.

The citizens of the Republic have but little idea of the injurious
effects which the putting forward unwarrantable claims has upon their
just claims. I have now before me a letter from a seafaring man who has
spent a quarter of a century upon the borders of the United States; he
i