>! se. 
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 Waitt’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 
Robison’s Essay on the Steam-engine, Watt expressed himself in the 
following terms relative to Mr. Boulton: “ The friendship that he 
bore me 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 all 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. 
