PETITION TO PARLIAMENT. 309 



from this, your petitioner's, invention. This boiler does not 

 require half of the materials, nor does it occupy half the space 

 required for any other boiler. No mason-work is necessary to 

 encircle the boiler. Accidents by fire can never occur, as the 

 fire is entirely surrounded by water, and greater duty can be 

 performed by an engine with this boiler, with less than half the 

 fuel, than has ever been accomplished by any engine without it. 

 These great advantages render this small and portable boiler 

 not only superior to all others used in mining and manufac- 

 turing, but likewise is the only one which can be used with 

 success in steam- vessels or steam-engine carriages. The boilers 

 in use prior to your petitioner's invention could never with any 

 degree of safety or convenience be used for steam navigation, 

 because they required a protection of brick and mason work 

 around them, to confine the fire by which they were encircled, 

 and it would have been impossible, independent of the great 

 additional bulk and weight, that boilers thus constructed could 

 withstand the rolling of vessels in heavy seas; and notwith- 

 standing every precaution the danger of the fire bursting 

 through the brick and mason work could never be effectually 

 guarded against. 



" That had it not been for this, your petitioner's, invention, 

 those vast improvements which have been made in the use of 

 steam could not have taken place, inasmuch as none of the old 

 boilers could have withstood a pressure of above 6 Ibs. to the 

 inch, mucH less a pressure of 60 Ibs. to the inch, or even of 

 above 150 Ibs. to the inch when necessary. 



" That as soon as your petitioner had brought his invention 

 into general use in Cornwall, and had proved to the public its 

 immense utility, he was obliged in 1816 to leave England for 

 South America to superintend extensive silver mines in Peru, 

 from whence he did not return until October last. That at the 

 time of your petitioner's departure the old boilers were falling 

 rapidly into disuse, and when he returned he found they had 

 been generally replaced by those of his invention, and that the 

 saving of coals occasioned thereby during that period amounted 

 in Cornwall alone to above SOOjOOO/. 1 



1 Sec Lean's report, vol. ii., p. 175. 

 VOL. 11. 



