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 franes (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 
a 
