180 [Assembly 



within the last thirty years a manuscript has been discovered in Italj 

 recording the travels of a prince of the family of Medici, in which 

 there is recorded his visit to an engine erected by the marquis of Wor- 

 cester, at Chelsea, and an account of its operation. In respect to Pa- 

 pin, it need only be said, that his plans for using steam, with the ex- 

 ception of one of the parts, the safety valve, have had no influence 

 upon the progress of the engine. His partisans have, however, en- 

 deavored to shew that the form of an apparatus which he intended to 

 set in motion by gunpowder, was copied in that modification of the 

 steam engine, from which by successive improvement we derive those 

 which are now in universal use. The merit of the actual introduc- 

 tion of steam as a motive power for useful purposes is due to neither 

 of these parties, but to an Englishman of the name of Savary. 



By the successive steps which have been just described, the steam 

 engine became an instrument of vast importance, and from the cir- 

 cumstance that the use of it w'as for many years almost wholly con- 

 jBned to Great Britain, it had an influence upon the destinies of that 

 country, and through it upon those of the w^hole globe, that is as ex- 

 traordinary as it is undoubted. Those who look into the sources of 

 national wealth and strength, may well question w^hcther the firmness 

 of Pitt, and the constancy of the cabinet trained in his school under 

 the saddest reverses, the naval skill of Nelson, or the warlike abili- 

 ties of Wellington would have been sufficient to avert the downfall 

 of Britain, but it is certain that all united would have been too fee- 

 ble to have brought about the destruction of the power o^ Napoleon, 

 had it not been for the invention of the watch maker of the college of 

 Glasgow. By the application of his engine to manufacturing purpo- 

 ses, the lost labor of the myriads drawn from the pursuits of civil 

 life to fill the ranks of the army and man the navy, was more than 

 supplied ; new sources of prosperity were opened, providing money 

 wherewith to meet taxation, increasing in geometric ratio, and fill up 

 loans to any extent that the ministry might judge it expedient to ask 

 for. 



By further improvement, which it would be tedious to recount, the 

 double acting low-pressure engine became automatic, or completely 

 self-acting. It supplied itself with water in exact proportion to its 

 expenditure of steam, regulated and governed its own speed, regis- 

 tered its own motions, oiled and cleansed its own parts, brought new 

 surfaces forward to supply those worn off by friction ; it made the- 



