378 WATT. 



Mr. Watt had to struggle against this state of the 

 law as well as against the shameless frauds, the 

 conspiracies of dishonest, unprincipled men. During 

 seven years and upwards he was condemned to lead 

 the life of litigation ; during seven years his genius 

 was withdrawn from his own pursuits to become 

 what he, no doubt, had, unfortunately for society, 

 full time to make himself, an accomplished and 

 learned lawyer; and it was not till five and thirty 

 years after his invention had been made, that he was 

 finally freed by a decision of the Court of King's 

 Bench, in 1799, from a durance which lasted all the 

 term of his patent, after all interest in the subject had 

 expired by efflux of time. It was proved before a 

 committee of the House of Commons in 1834, that 

 had his statutory term in the patent only been secured 

 to him, he would have been a great loser by the in- 

 vention ; and that for some years after the Act of 

 Parliament had extended the time, he still was out of 

 pocket : consequently it follows, that had he never 

 taken a patent at all, but trusted entirely to the pre- 

 ference which his being the inventor would have 

 given him in the market, as a maker of steam-ap- 

 paratus, that is, had he taken only this indirect 

 benefit instead of the direct gains of the monopoly, he 

 would have been better off in a pecuniary point of 

 view than he was by means of the grant of the patent 

 and its Parliamentary extension. The Act which 

 I introduced in 1835, grounded mainly upon that 

 evidence, has removed some of the greatest defects in 

 the law ; and it has enabled, when coupled with the 

 subsequent Act of last Session, an inventor to obtain, 



