become more or less efficient workers with a few month's
experience. Manufacturing is therefore to spread rapidly throughout the
world. All nations may be trusted to develop, and if necessary for a
time protect, their natural resources as a patriotic duty. Only when
prolonged trials have been made can it be determined which nation can
best and most cheaply provide the articles for which raw material
abounds.

The visit to Paris enabled Watt and Boulton to make the acquaintance of
the most eminent men of science, with whom they exchanged ideas
afterward in frequent and friendly correspondence. Watt described
himself as being, upon one occasion, "drunk from morning to night with
Burgundy and undeserved praise." The latter was always a disconcerting
draught for our subject; anything but reference to his achievements for
the modest self-effacing genius.

While in Paris, Berthollet told Watt of his new method of bleaching by
chlorine, and gave him permission to communicate it to his
father-in-law, who adopted it in his business, together with several
improvements of Watt's invention, the results of a long series of
experiments. Watt, writing to Mr. Macgregor, April 27, 1787, says:

In relation to the inventor, he is a man of science, a member of
the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and a physician, not very
rich, a very modest and worthy man, and an excellent chemist. My
sole motives in meddling with it were to procure such reward as
I could to a man of merit who had made an extensively useful
discovery in the arts, and secondly, I had an immediate view to
your interest; as to myself, I had no lucrative views
whatsoever, it being a thing out of my way, which both my
business and my health prevented me from pursuing further than
it might serve for amusement when unfit for more serious
business. Lately, by a letter from the inventor, he informs me
that he gives up all intentions of pursuing it with lucrative
views, as he says he will not compromise his quiet and happiness
by engaging in business; in which, perhaps, he is right; but
if the discovery has real merit, as I apprehend, he is certainly
entitled to a generous reward, which I would wish for the honour
of Britain, to procure for him; but I much fear, in the way you
state it, that nothing could be got worth his acceptance.

France has been distinguished for men of science who have thus refrained
fr