t having recently quoted Burke as one of
the adversaries to our great mechanic, it appears only a just
compensation here to mention that the Roys, Mylnes, Herschels, Delucs,
Ramsdens, Robisons, Murdocks, Rennies, Cummings, Mores, Southerns,
eagerly presented themselves before the magistrates to maintain the
rights of persecuted genius. It may be also advisable to add, as a
curious trait in the history of the human mind, that the lawyers--I
shall here prudently remark that we treat only of the lawyers of a
neighboring country--to whom malignity imputes a superabundant luxury in
words, reproached Watt, against whom they had leagued in great numbers,
for having invented nothing but ideas. This, I may remark in passing,
brought upon them before the tribunal the following apostrophe from Mr.
Rous: "Go, gentlemen, go and rub yourselves against those untangible
combinations, as you are pleased to call Watt's engines; against those
pretended abstract ideas; they will crush you like gnats, they will hurl
you up in the air out of sight!"

The persecutions which a warm-hearted man meets with, in the quarters
where strict justice would lead him to expect unanimous testimonies of
gratitude, seldom fail to discourage, and to sour his disposition. Nor
did Watt's good-humor remain proof against such trials. Seven long years
of lawsuits had excited in him such a sentiment of indignation, that it
occasionally showed itself in severe expressions; thus he wrote to one
of his friends: "What I most detest in this world are plagiarists! The
plagiarists. They have already cruelly assailed me; and if I had not an
excellent memory, their impudent assertions would have ended by
persuading me that I have made no improvement in steam-engines. The bad
passions of those men to whom I have been most useful (would you believe
it?) have gone so far as to lead them to maintain that those
improvements, instead of deserving this denomination, have been highly
prejudicial to public wealth."

Watt, though greatly irritated, was not discouraged. His engines were
not, in the first place, like Newcomen's, mere pumps, mere
draining-pumps. In a few years he transformed them into universal motive
powers, and of indefinite force. His first step in this line was the
invention of a double-acting engine (_a double effet_).

In the engine known under this name, as well as in the one denominated
the "modified" engine, the steam from the boiler, when the mechanic
wish