yn tied aS ~r 
EXPENSIVE LAWSUITS. 399 
of genius, the manufacturers of wdeas, it seemed, were 
to remain strangers to material enjoyments; it was 
natural that their history should continue to resemble a 
legend of martyrs ! 
Whatever may be thought of these reflections, it is 
certain that the Cornwall miners paid the dues that were 
granted to the Soho engineers with increased repugnance 
from year to year. They availed themselves of the very 
earliest difficulties raised by plagiarists, to claim release 
from all obligation. The discussion was serious; it 
might compromise the social position of our associate ; 
he therefore bestowed his entire attention to it, and be- 
came a lawyer. ‘The long and expensive lawsuits that 
resulted therefrom, but which they finally gained, would 
not deserve to be now exhumed; but having recently 
quoted Burke as one of the adversaries to our great 
mechanic, it appears only a just compensation here to 
mention that the Roys, Mylnes, Herschels, Delucs, 
Ramsdens, Robisons, Murdocks, Rennies, Cummings, 
Mores, Southerns, eagerly presented themselves before 
the magistrates, to maintain the rights of persecuted 
genius. It may be also advisable to add, as a curious 
trait in the history of the human mind, that the lawyers 
(I shall here prudently remark that we treat only of the 
lawyers of a neighbouring country), to whom malignity 
imputes a superabundant luxury in words, reproached 
Watt, against whom they had leagued in great numbers, 
for having invented nothing but ideas. This, I may 
remark in passing, brought upon them before the tribu- 
nal, the following apostrophe from Mr. Rous:* “Go, 
* Mr. Rous, who acted as counsel for the patentees, published his 
speech in the form of a pamphlet. In the text we have reproduced 
the English from a version of M. Arago’s French, an unsatisfactory 
