396 JAMES WATT. 



purest enjoyments of intellect ; if we do not reward the 

 creators of mechanical combinations, which would mul- 

 tiply the products of industry to infinity ; who would 

 weaken, to the benefit of civilization and humanity, the 

 effect of the difference of position ; who would some day 

 allow the rudest manufactories to be examined without 

 finding, in any part of them, the distressing spectacle of 

 fathers of families and children of both sexes assimilated 

 to brutes, advancing precipitately to their tombs ? 



In the early part of 1774, after contending with Watt's 

 indifference, his friends put him into communication with 

 Mr. Boulton, of Soho, near Birmingham ; an enterpris- 

 ing active man, gifted with various talents.* The two 



* In the notes which accompanied the last edition of Professor 

 Eobison's Essay on the Steam-engine, Watt expressed himself in the 

 following terms relative to Mr. Boulton: " The friendship that he 

 bore rne ended only with his life. The friendship that I bore him 

 leads me to feel it my duty to avail myself of this opportunity, the 

 last, probably, that will be offered me, to say how much I was in- 

 debted to him. It is to the earnest encouragement held out to me by 

 Mr. Boulton, to his taste for scientific discoveries, and to the sagacity 

 with which he applied them to the progress of the arts ; it is also to the 

 intimate knowledge he possessed of manufacturing and commercial 

 affairs, that I attribute, in great measure, the success with which my 

 efforts have been crowned." 



Mr. Boulton had already had a manufactory for several years at 

 Soho, when the partnership began which has rendered his name so 

 inseparable from that of Watt. This establishment, the first that 

 had been formed on so large a scale in England, is still quoted for its 

 elegant architecture. Boulton used to make there ah 1 sorts of work in 

 steel, in plated articles, in silver, in or moulu ; even to astronomical 

 clocks, and paintings on glass. During the last twenty years of his 

 life, Boulton occupied himself with improving the coining of money. 

 By the combination of some operations invented in France, with new 

 presses and an ingenious application of the steam-engine, he con- 

 trived to unite an exceeding rapidity of performance with perfection 

 of work. It was Boulton who executed for the English Government 

 the recoining of the whole copper currency in the United Kingdom. 



