398 JAMES WATT. 
become the most useful school in practical mechanies for 
all England. The construction of draining pumps of 
very large dimensions was soon undertaken there, and 
repeated experiments showed that, with equal effect, 
they saved three quarters of the fuel that was consumed 
by Newcomen’s previous engines. From that moment 
the new pumps were spread through all the mining 
counties, especially in Cornwall. Boulton and Watt 
received as a duty the value of one third of the coal 
saved by each of their engines. We may form an 
opinion of the commercial importance of the invention 
from an authentic fact; in the Chace-water Mine alone, 
where three pumps were at work, the proprietors found 
it to their advantage to buy up the inventor’s rights for 
the annual sum of 60,000 frances (£2,400). Thus in 
one establishment alone, the substitution of the condenser 
for internal injection, had occasioned an annual saving 
in fuel of upwards of 180,000 franes (£7,000).* 
Men are easily reconciled to paying the rent of a 
house, or the price of a farm. But this good-will disap- 
pears when an ¢dea is the subject treated of, whatever 
advantage, whatever profit, it may be the means of pro- 
curing. Ideas! are they not conceived without trouble 
or labour? Who can prove but that with time the same 
might not have occurred to everybody? In this way 
days, months, and years of priority would give no force 
to a patent ! 
Such opinions, which I need not here criticize, had 
obtained a footing from mere routine, as decided. Men 
* Here it must be borne in mind that a principal method of insur- 
ing a return for their outlay, was their manufacturing steam-engines 
on the most extensive scale, with a degree of accuracy never before 
applied in the production of large machinery; and this was so fully 
accomplished, that all other engines were superseded.— Translator. 
