RULE FOR PRIORITY OF CLAIM. 435 



to be expected from a rival or competitor, however emi 

 nent his reputation may already be. Cavendish could 

 scarcely listen to people on business, when they went to 

 consult him about the investment of his twenty-five or 

 thirty millions (a million sterling or more) ; but you 

 now know whether he felt equally indifferent about ex 

 periments. It would not be requiring too much, then, if 

 the historians of science were not to receive, as available 

 titles to property, any but written titles ; perhaps, I ought 

 rather to say, any but published titles. Then, and only 

 then, would those quarrels end, which are continually 

 recommencing, by which national vanity generally suf 

 fers ; then the name of Watt would resume in the history 

 of chemistry the high post that is his due. 



When the solution of a question of priority, like the 

 one we have been discussing, is founded on the most 

 attentive examination of printed memoirs, and on a minute 

 comparison of dates, it assumes the character of a real 

 demonstration. Still I feel myself bound to give a rapid 

 glance at the various difficulties to which some very good 

 intellects appear to me to have attached importance. 



How can it be admitted, I have been asked, that in the 

 midst of an immense whirlpool of commercial affairs, that 

 preoccupied by a multitude of lawsuits, that obliged to 

 provide by daily inventions against the difficulties of a 

 rising manufactory, Watt could find the time to follow 

 the progress of chemistry step by step, to make fresh ex 

 periments, to propose explanations which the masters of 

 the science themselves would not have thought of ? 



To this difficulty I shall make a short but conclusive 

 reply : I hold in my hands the copy of an active corre 

 spondence principally relative to chemical topics, that 

 Watt kept up during the years 1782, 1783, and 1784, 



