a prolongation of twenty-five years to
Watt's patent, he and Boulton together began the establishments at Soho,
which have become the most useful school in practical mechanics for all
England. The construction of draining-pumps of very large dimensions was
soon undertaken there, and repeated experiments showed that, with equal
effect, they saved three-quarters of the fuel that was consumed by
Newcomen's previous engines. From that moment the new pumps were spread
through all the mining counties, especially in Cornwall. Boulton and
Watt received as a duty the value of one-third of the coal saved by each
of their engines. We may form an opinion of the commercial importance of
the invention from an authentic fact: in the Chace-water mine alone,
where three pumps were at work, the proprietors found it to their
advantage to buy up the inventor's rights for the annual sum of sixty
thousand francs (two thousand four hundred pounds). Thus in one
establishment alone, the substitution of the condenser for internal
injection had occasioned an annual saving in fuel of upward of one
hundred eighty thousand francs (seven thousand pounds).

Men are easily reconciled to paying the rent of a house or the price of
a farm. But this good-will disappears when an _idea_ is the subject
treated of, whatever advantage, whatever profit, it may be the means of
procuring. Ideas! are they not conceived without trouble or labor? Who
can prove that with time the same might not have occurred to everybody?
In this way days, months, and years of priority would give no force to
the patent!

Such opinions, which I need not here criticise, had obtained a footing
from mere routine as decided. Men of genius, the "manufacturers of
ideas," it seemed, were to remain strangers to material enjoyments; it
was natural that their history should continue to resemble a legend of
martyrs!

Whatever may be thought of these reflections, it is certain that the
Cornwall miners paid the dues that were granted to the Soho engineers
with increased repugnance from year to year. They availed themselves of
the very earliest difficulties raised by plagiarists, to claim release
from all obligation. The discussion was serious; it might compromise the
social position of our associate: he therefore bestowed his entire
attention to it and became a lawyer. The long and expensive lawsuits
that resulted therefrom, but which they finally gained, would not
deserve to be now exhumed; bu