RULE FOR PRIORITY OF CLAIM. 435 



to be expected from a rival or competitor, however emi- 

 nent his reputation may already be. Cavendish could 

 scarcely listen to people on business, when they went to 

 consult him about the investment of his twenty-five or 

 thirty millions (a million sterling or more) ; but you 

 now know whether he felt equally indifferent about ex- 

 periments. It would not be requiring too much, then, if 

 the historians of science were not to receive, as available 

 titles to property, any but written titles ; perhaps, I ought 

 rather to say, any but published titles. Then, and only 

 then, would those quarrels end, which are continually 

 recommencing, by which national vanity generally suf- 

 fers ; then the name of Watt Avould resume in the history 

 of chemistry the high post that is his due. 



When the solution of a question of priority, like the 

 one we have been discussing, is founded on the most 

 attentive examination of printed memoirs, and on a minute 

 comparison of dates, it assumes the character of a real 

 demonstration. Still I feel myself bound to give a rapid 

 glance at the various difficulties to which some veiy good 

 intellects appear to me to have attached importance. 



How can it be admitted, I have been asked, that in the 

 midst of an immense whirlpool of commercial affairs, that 

 preoccupied by a multitude of lawsuits, that obliged to 

 provide by daily inventions against the difficulties of a 

 rising manufactory, Watt could find the time to follow 

 the progress of chemistry step by step, to make fresh ex- 

 periments, to propose explanations which the masters of 

 the science themselves would not have thought of ? 



To this difficulty I shall make a short but conclusive 

 reply : I hold in my hands the copy of an active corre- 

 spondence principally relative to chemical topics, that 

 Watt kept up during the years 1782, 1783, and 1784, 



