an answer from Russia, engage my
personal attendance, I will send an experienced person in my stead."

As a specimen of the vigorous style in which he repelled attacks on his
merits as an inventor, I shall give the following:--

Messrs. Editors,--The London "Mechanics' Magazine," for October, 1844,
copies an article from the Baltimore "American" in which my discovery in
relation to causing electricity to cross rivers without wires is
announced, and then in a note to his readers the editor of the magazine
makes the following assertion: "The English reader need scarcely be
informed that Mr. Morse has in this, as in other matters relating to
magneto telegraphs, only _re_discovered what was previously well known in
this country."

More illiberality and deliberate injustice has been seldom condensed
within so small a compass. From the experience, however, that I, in
common with many American scientific gentlemen, have already had of the
piratical conjoined with the abusive propensity of a certain class of
English _savans_ and writers, I can scarcely expect either liberality or
justice from the quarter whence this falsehood has issued. But there is,
fortunately, an appeal to my own countrymen, to the impartial and
liberal-minded of Continental Europe, and the truly noble of England
herself.

I claim to be the original inventor of the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph; to
be the first who planned and operated a really practicable Electric
Telegraph. This is the broad claim I make in behalf of my country and
myself before the world. If I cannot substantiate this claim, if any
other, to whatever country he belongs, can make out a previous or better
claim, I will cheerfully yield him the palm.

Although I had planned and completed my Telegraph unconscious, until
after my Telegraph was in operation, that even the words "Electric
Telegraph" had ever been combined until I had combined them, I have now
made myself familiar with, I believe, all the plans, abortive and
otherwise, which have been given to the world since the time of Franklin,
who was the first to suggest the possibility of using electricity as a
means of transmitting intelligence. With this knowledge, both of the
various plans devised and the time when they were severally devised, I
claim to be the first inventor of a really practicable telegraph on the
electric principle. When this shall be seriously called in question by
any responsible name, I have the proof in readin