EXPENSIVE LAWSUITS. 399 



of genius, the manufacturers of ideas, 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 



