462 JAMES WATT. 







that " no man has had more evident claim than Watt to 

 the homage of his country, to the respect and veneration 

 of future ages." 



I will now give some numerical estimates, some num- 

 bers, which to my mind are more eloquent still than the 

 several passages which I have been quoting. 



Mr. Boulton, junior, announced that in the year 1819, 

 the manufactory of Soho alone had already made Watt's 

 engines equal to the labour of a hundred thousand 

 horses ; that the saving arising from the substitution of 

 these machines for animal power amounted to seventy- 

 five millions of francs (three millions sterling) per an- 

 num. In England and Scotland at that time, there 

 existed upwards of ten thousand steam-engines. They 

 did the work of five hundred thousand horses, or of 

 between three and four millions of men ; with an annual 

 saving of three or four hundred millions of francs (twelve 

 or sixteen millions sterling). And these results must by 

 this time be more than doubled. 



I have thus abridged what was thought of Watt by 

 the ministers, the statesmen, the learned men, and the 

 industrial men the best able to appreciate him. Gen- 

 tlemen, the creator of six or eight millions of workmen, 

 indefatigable and assiduous workmen, among whom 

 authority will never have to repress combination or riot, 

 workmen on five centimes per day (one half-penny) ; 

 this man, who, by brilliant inventions, gave England the 

 means of maintaining a desperate struggle, during which 

 its very nationality was at stake, this new Archimides, 

 this benefactor of the whole human race, whose memory 

 will be blessed by future generations what was done to 

 honour him during his life ? 



The peerage is in England the first of its dignities, its 



