Morse of September 1:--

SIR,--It is with lively satisfaction that I have the honor to announce to
you that a sum of four hundred thousand francs will be remitted to you,
in four annuities, in the name of France, of Austria, of Belgium, of the
Netherlands, of Piedmont, of Russia, of the Holy See, of Sweden, of
Tuscany and of Turkey, as an honorary gratuity, and as a reward,
altogether personal, of your useful labors. Nothing can better mark than
this collective act of reward the sentiment of public gratitude which
your invention has so justly excited.

The Emperor has already given you a testimonial of his high esteem when
he conferred upon you, more than a year ago, the decoration of a
Chevalier of his order of the Legion of Honor. You will find a new mark
of it in the initiative which his Majesty wished that his government
should take in this conjuncture; and the decision that I charge myself to
bring to your knowledge is a brilliant proof of the eager and sympathetic
adhesion that his proposition has met with from the States I have just
enumerated.

I pray you to accept on this occasion, sir, my personal congratulations,
as well as the assurance of my sentiments of the most distinguished
consideration.

While this letter is dated September 1, the amount of the gratuity agreed
upon seems to have been made known soon after the first meeting of the
convention, for on April 29, the following letter was written to Morse by
M. van den Broek, his agent in all the preliminaries leading up to the
convention, and who, by the way, was to receive as his commission one
third of the amount of the award, whatever it might be: "I have this
morning seen the secretary of the Minister, and from him learned that the
sum definitely fixed is 400,000 francs, payable in four years. This does
not by any means answer our expectations, and I am afraid you will be
much disappointed, yet I used every exertion in my power, but without
avail, to procure a grant of a larger sum."

It certainly was a pitiful return for the millions of dollars which
Morse's invention had saved or earned for those nations which used it as
a government monopoly, and while I find no note of complaint in his own
letters, his friends were more outspoken. Mr. Kendall, in a letter of May
18, exclaims: "I know not how to express my contempt of the meanness of
the European Governments in the award they propose to make you as _the_
inventor of the Telegraph. I had set th