e look,
act, think, on all matters of human concernment? Here comes a book,
assuming in its title that one John Fitch, of whom his generation
seems not to have thought enough to paint his portrait, was the
inventor of the steamboat. It professes to be "The Life of John
Fitch"; but we are sorry to say it is rather a documentary argument to
prove that he was "the inventor of the steamboat." As an argument, it
is both needless and needlessly strong. We already knew to a certainty
that nobody could present a better claim to that honor than John
Fitch. True, the _idea_ did not wait for him. The engine could not
have been working a hundred years in the world without giving birth to
that. But till Watt invented it anew in 1782, by admitting the steam
alternately at both ends of the cylinder, it was too awkward and
clumsy to become a practical navigator. Moreover, though it could pump
admirably, it had not been taught to turn a crank. The French assert,
that experiments in steam-propulsion were made on the Seine, by Count
Auxiron and Perrier, in 1774, and on the Saone, by De Jouffroy, in
1782; but we know they led to no practical results, and the knowledge
of them probably did not, for some years, travel beyond the limits of
the French language. There is no satisfactory evidence that a boat was
ever moved by steam, within the boundaries of Anglo-Saxondom, before
John Fitch did it, on the 27th of July, 1786. His successful and every
way brilliant experiment on that occasion led directly to practical
results,--to wit, the formation of a company, embracing some of the
foremost men of Philadelphia, which built a small steam-packet for the
conveyance of passengers, and ran it during three summers, ending with
that of 1790. The company then failed, and broke poor Fitch's heart,
simply because the investment had not thus far proved lucrative, and
they were unwilling to make the further advances requisite to carry
out his moderate and reasonable plans. The only person who ever
claimed, in English, to have made a steamboat experiment before Fitch,
was James Rumsey, of Virginia, who, in 1788, published some testimony
to show that he had done it as early as April, 1786, that he had
broached the idea, _confidentially_, two years earlier, and that Fitch
_might_ have received it from one who violated his confidence. Fitch
promptly annihilated these pretences by a pamphlet, a reprint of which
maybe found in the Patent-Office Report for 1850. T