Lives of Boulton and Watt by Samuel Smiles: Chapter 14

Cosgarne House

United Mines District - St. Day in the middle distance

Entrance to Cosgarne House

CHAPTER XIV. FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES - BOULTON IN CORNWALL – ATTACK AND DEFENCE OF THE ENGINE PATENT.

Boulton again went to Watt's help in Cornwall at the end of autumn, 1779. He could not afford to make a long stay, but left so soon as he had settled several long-pending agreements with the mine proprietors. The partners then returned to Birmingham together. Before leaving, they installed Lieutenant Henderson as their representative, to watch over their interests in their absence. Henderson was a sort of Jack-of-all-trades and master of none. He had been an officer of marines, and afterwards a West India sugar-planter. He lost all that he possessed in Jamaica, but gained some knowledge of levelling, draining, and machinery. He was also a bit of an inventor, and first introduced himself to Boulton's notice by offering to sell him a circular motion by steam which he alleged he had discovered. This led to a correspondence, which resulted in his engagement to travel for the firm, and to superintend the erection of engines when necessary.

Henderson experienced the same difficulty that Watt had done in managing the adventurers, and during his stay in Cornwall he was never done calling upon Boulton to hasten to his assistance and help him, as he said, "to put them in good spirits and good temper." As the annual meetings drew near, Henderson anticipated a stormy time of it and pleaded harder than ever for Boulton to come to him. It seemed as if it would be necessary for Boulton to take up his residence in Cornwall and as the interests at stake were great, it might he worth his while to do so. By the summer of 1780, Boulton and Watt had made and sold forty pumping-engines, of which number twenty were erected and at work in different parts of Cornwall and it was generally expected that before long there would scarcely be an engine of the old construction at work in the county. This was, in fact, the only branch of Boulton's extensive concerns that promised to be remunerative. He had become loaded with a burden of debt, from which the success of the engine-business seethed to offer the only prospect of relief.

Boulton's affairs seemed indeed fast approaching to a crisis. He had raised money in all directions to carry on his extensive concerns. He had sold the Patkington estate, which came to him by his wife, to Lord Donegal, for £15,000; he had sold the greater part of his father's property, and raised further sums by mortgaging the remainder; he had borrowed largely from Day, Wedgwood, and others of his personal friends, and obtained heavy advances from his bankers; but all this was found insufficient, and his embarrassments seemed only to increase. Watt could do nothing to help him with money, though he had consented to the mortgage of the steam-engine royalties to Mr. Wiss, by which the sum of £7,000 had been raised. This liability lay heavy on the mind of Watt, who could never shake himself free of the horror of having incurred such a debt and many were the imploring letters that be addressed to Boulton on the subject. "I beg of you," said he, "to attend to these money affairs. I cannot rest in my bed until they [i. e. the mortgage and banker's advance] have some determinate form. I beg you will pardon my importunity, but I cannot bear the uneasiness of my own mind, and it is as much your interest as mine to have them settled."

The other partner, Fothergill, was quite as downhearted. He urged that the firm of Boulton and Fothergill should at once stop payment and wind up but as this would have seriously hurt the credit of the engine firm, Boulton would not listen to the suggestion. They must hold on as they had done before, until better days came round. Fothergill recommended that at least the unremunerative branches of the business should be brought to a close. The heaviest losses had indeed been sustained through Fothergill himself, whose foreign connexions, instead of being of advantage to the firm, had proved the reverse and Mr. Matthews, the London agent, repeatedly pressed Boulton to decline further transactions with foreigners.

There was one branch of the Boulton and Fothergill business which Boulton at once agreed to give up. This was the painting and japanning business by which, as appears from a statement prepared by Mr. Walker, now before us, the firm were losing at the rate of £500 a year.

The picture-painting business seems to have been begun in 1777, and was carried on for some years under the direction of Mr. Eginton, who afterwards achieved considerable reputation at Birmingham as a manufacturer of painted glass. A degree of interest has been recently raised on the subject of the Soho pictures, in consequence of the statements hazarded as to the method by which they are supposed to have been produced. It has been surmised that they were taken by some process resembling photography. We have, however, been unable to find anything in the correspondence of the firm calculated to support this view. On the contrary, they are invariably spoken of as "mechanical paintings," "pictures," or "prints," produced by means of "paints" or "colours." Though the precise process by which they were produced is not now known, there seems reason to believe that they were impressions from plates prepared in a peculiar manner. The impressions were taken "mechanically" on paper; and both oil and water colours were made use of. Some of the pictures were of large size - 40 by 50 inches - the subjects being chiefly classical. This branch of the business being found unproductive, was brought to a close in 1780, when the partnership with Eginton was at the same time dissolved.

Another and more fortunate branch of business into which Boulton entered with Watt and Keir, about the same time, was the manufacture of letter-copying machines. Watt made the invention, Boulton found the money for taking out the patent, and Keir conducted the business. Watt was a very voluminous correspondent, and the time occupied by him in copying letters, the contents of which he desired to keep secret from third parties, was such that in order to economise it he invented the method of letter-copying in such common use. The invention consisted in the transfer, by pressure, of the writing made with mucilaginous ink, to damped and unsized transparent copying-paper, by means either of a rolling press or a screw press. Though Watt himself preferred the rollers, the screw press is now generally adopted as the more simple and efficacious process.

This invention was made by Watt in the summer of 1778. In June we find him busy experimenting on copying-papers of different kinds, requesting Boulton to send him specimens of "the most even and whitest unsized paper;" and in the following month he wrote Dr. Black, "I have lately discovered a method of copying writing instantaneously, provided it has been written the same day, or within twenty-four hours, I send you a specimen, and will impart the secret if it will be of any use to you. It enables me to copy all my business letters." For two years Watt kept his method of copying a secret; but hearing that certain persons were prying into it with the view of turning it to account, he determined to anticipate them by taking out a patent, which was secured in May, 1780. By that time Watt had completed the details of the press and the copying-ink. Sufficient mahogany and lignum-vitae had been ordered for making 500 machines, and Boulton went up to London to try and get the press introduced in the public offices. He first waited upon several noblemen to interest them in the machine, amongst others on Lord Dartmouth, who proposed to show it to George III. "The King," said Boulton, in a letter to Watt, "writes a great deal, and takes copies of all he writes with his own band, so that Lord Dartmouth thinks it will be a very desirable thing for His Majesty." Several of those to whom the machine was first shown, apprehended that it would lead to increase of forgery — then a great source of terror to commercial men. The bankers concurred in this view, and strongly denounced the invention; and they expostulated with Boulton and Watt's agent for offering the presses for sale. "Mr. Woodmason," wrote Boulton, "says the bankers mob him for having anything to do with it; they say that it ought to be suppressed." Boulton was not dismayed by this opposition, but proceeded to issue circulars to the members of the Houses of Lords and Commons, descriptive of the machine, inviting them to an inspection of it, after which he communicated the results to his partner: -

. . . "On Tuesday morning last I waited on some particular noblemen, according to promise, at their own houses, with the press, and at one o'clock I took possession of a private room adjoining the Court of Requests, Westminster Hall, where I was visited by several members of both Houses, who in general were well pleased with the invention; but all expressed their fears of forgery, which occasioned and obliged me to exercise my lungs very much. Many of the members tried to copy bank notes, but in vain. I had a full audience till half-past eight o'clock. . . . I had quite a mob of members next day; some of them mobbed me for introducing such wicked arts; however, upon the whole, I had a greater majority than Lord North bath had this year.

On Thursday . . . at half-past two .. I had a tolerable good House, even a better than the Speaker, who was often obliged to send his proper officer to fetch away from me the members to vote, and sometimes to make a House. As soon as the House formed into a Committee upon the Malt-tax, the Speaker left the chair and sent for me and the machine, which was carried through the gallery in face of the whole House into the Speaker's Chamber. I found him full of fears about the dreadful consequences, which I quieted before I left him, and he with his two friends subscribed. I attended again on Friday, but, from a very thin House and curiosity abating, I had very few [subscriptions]. Mr. Banks came to see the machine on Thursday. I thought it might be of service to show it to the Royal Society that evening. . . . After the business of the Society was over, he announced Mr. Watt's invention, and my readiness to show it, and it was accordingly brought in and afforded much satisfaction to a crowded audience. I did not show the list of subscribers and the proposals, nor dishonour philosophy by trade in that room. . . . I spent Friday evening with Smeaton and other engineers at a coffee-house, when a gentleman (not knowing me) exclaimed against the copying-machine, and wished the inventor was hanged and the machines all burnt, which brought on a laugh, as I was known to most present. . . . There are great names enough already among the subscribers to give a sanction and authority to it, as well as to make it fashionable, which has more influence upon the minds of three-fourths of the Londoners than the intrinsic merit of the thing, and without which it would have been some years in making its way."

By the end of the year, the 150 machines first made were sold off, and more orders were coming in. Thirty were wanted for exportation abroad, and a still greater number were wanted at home. The letter-copying machine gradually and steadily made its way, until at length there was scarcely a house of any extensive business transactions in which it was not to be found. Watt himself, writing of the invention some thirty years later, observed that it had proved so useful to himself that, it had been worth all the trouble of inventing it, even had it been attended with no pecuniary profit whatever.

Boulton's principal business, however, while in town, was not so much to push the letter-copying machine, but to set straight the bankers' account, which had been overdrawn to the amount of £17,000. He was able to satisfy them to a certain extent by granting mortgages on the engine royalties payable in Cornwall, besides giving personal bonds for repayment of the advances within a given time. It was necessary to obtain Watt's consent to both these measures but, though Watt was willing to agree to the former expedient, he positively refused to be a party to the personal bonds. Boulton was therefore under the necessity of arranging the matter himself. He was thereby enabled to meet the more pressing claims upon the firm, and to make arrangements for pushing on the engine business with renewed vigour. Watt was, however, by no means so anxious on this score as Boulton was. He was even desirous of retiring from the concern, and going abroad in search of health. "Without I can spare time this next summer," he wrote, "to go to some more healthy climate to procure a little health, if climate will do, I must give up business and the world too. My head is good for nothing." While Boulton was earnestly pressing the invention on the mining interest, and pushing for orders, Watt shuddered at the prospect of one. He saw in increase of business only increase of headaches. "The care and attention which our business requires," said he, "make me at present dread a fresh order with as much horror as other people with joy receive one. What signifies it to a man though he gain the whole world, if he lose his health and his life? The first of these losses has already befallen me, and the second will probably be the consequence of it, without some favourable circumstances which at present I cannot foresee should prevent it."

Judging by the correspondence of Watt, his sufferings of mind and body at this time must have been excessive; and the wonder is how he lived through it. But "the creaking gate hangs long on its hinges," and he lived to the age of eighty-three, long surviving his stronger and more courageous partner. Intense headache seemed to be his normal state, and his only tolerable moments were those in which the headache was less violent than usual. His son has since described how he remembered seeing his father about this time, sitting by the fireside for hours together, with his head leaning on his elbow, suffering from most acute sick-headaches, and scarcely able to give utterance to his thoughts. "My headache, "he would write to Boulton, "keeps its week-aversary to-day." At another time, "I am plagued with the blues; my head is too much confused to do any brain-work." Once, when he had engaged to accompany his wife to an evening concert, he wrote, "I am quite eat up with the mulligrubs, and to complete the matter I am obliged to go to an oratorio, or serenata, or some other nonsense, to-night." Mrs. Watt tried her best to draw him out of himself, but it was not often that she could divert him from his misery. What relieved him most was sleep, when he could obtain it; and, to recruit his powers, he was accustomed to take from nine to eleven hours sleep at night besides naps during the day. When Boulton had erysipelas, in Cornwall, and could not stir abroad, he wrote to his partner complaining of an unusual lowness of spirits, on which Watt undertook to be his comforter in his own peculiar way. "There is no pitch of low spirits," said he, "that I have not a perfect notion of, from hanging, melancholy to peevish melancholy: conquer the devil when he is young." Watt experienced all the tortures of confirmed dyspepsia, which cast its dark shadow over the life of every day. His condition was often most pitiable. It is true, many of the troubles which beset him were imaginary, but he suffered from them in idea as much as if they had been real. Small evils fretted him, and great ones overwhelmed him. He met them all more than halfway, and usually anticipated the worst. He had few moments of cheerfulness, hopefulness, or repose. Speaking of one of his violent headaches, he said, "I believe it was caused by something making my stomach very acid;" and unhappily, as in the case of most dyspeptics, the acidity communicated itself to his temper. When these fits came upon him, and the world was going against him, and ruin seemed about to swallow him up quick, he would sit down and pen a long gloomy letter to his partner, full of agony and despair. His mental condition at the time shows at what expense of suffering in mind and body the triumphs of genius are sometimes achieved.

In the autumn of 1780, Boulton went into Cornwall for a time to look after the business there. Several new engines had been ordered, and were either erected or in progress, at Wheal Treasury, Tresavean, Penrydee, Dalcoath, Wheal Chance, Wheal Crenver, and the United Mines. One of the principal objects of his visit was to settle the agreements with the mining companies for the use of these engines.

It had been found difficult to estimate the actual savings of fuel, and the settlement of the accounts was a constant source of cavil. There was so much temptation on the one side to evade the payments according to the tables prepared by Watt, and so much occasion for suspicion on the other that they had been evaded by unfair means, that it appeared to Boulton that the only practicable method was to agree to a fixed annual payment for each engine erected, according to its power and the work it performed. Watt was very averse to giving up the tables which had cost him so much labour to prepare; but Boulton more wisely urged the adoption of the plan that would work most smoothly, and get rid of the heart burnings on both sides. Boulton accordingly sent down to Watt a draft agreement with the Wheal Virgin adventurers, who were prepared to pay the large sum of £2,500 a year in respect of five new engines erected for their firm and urged him to agree to the terms. "You must not be too rigid," said he, "in fixing the dates of payment. A hard bargain is a bad bargain." Watt replied in a long letter, urging the accuracy of his tables, and intimating his reluctance to depart from them. To this Boulton responded, "Now, my dear Sir, the way to do justice to our own characters, and to trample under our feet envy, hatred, and malice, is to dispel the doubts, and to clear up the minds of the gentlemanly part of this our best of all kingdoms; for if they think we do wrong, it operates against us although we do none, just as much as if we really did the wrong. Patience and candour should mark all our actions, as well as firmness in being just to ourselves and others. A fair character and standing with the people is attended with great advantage as well as satisfaction, of which you are fully sensible, so I need say no more."

Watt did not give up his favourite tables without further expostulation and argument, but at length he reluctantly have his assent to the Wheal Virgin agreement, by which the annual payment of £2,500 was secured. Though this was really an excellent bargain, Watt seemed to regard it in the light of a calamity. In the letter intimating his reluctant concurrence, he observed: "These disputes are so very disagreeable to me, that I am very sorry I ever bestowed so great a part of my time and money on the steam-engine. I can bear with the artifices of the designing part of mankind, but having myself no intention to deceive others, I cannot brook the suspicions of the honest part, which I am conscious I never merited even in intention, far less by any actual attempt to deceive." Two days later Watt again wrote, urging the superiority of his tables, concluding thus: "I have been so much molested with headaches this week, that I have perhaps written in a more peevish strain than I should have done if I had been in better health, which I hope you will excuse." Boulton replied, expressing regret at his lowness of spirits and bad health, advising him to cheer up. "At your leisure," said he, "you may amuse yourself with a calculation of what all the engines we shall have in eighteen months erected in Cornwall will amount to you will find it good for low spirits." "I assure you," he said at another time, "you have no cause for apprehension as to anything in this country; all is going on well." Boulton seemed to regard his partner in the light of a permanent invalid, which he was; and on writing to his various correspondents on matters of business at Soho, he would abjure them not to cross Mr. Watt. To Fothergill he wrote respecting the execution of an order, "the matter must be managed with some delicacy respecting Mr. Watt, as you know that that when he is low-spirited he is vexed at trifles."

Another important part of Boulton's business in Cornwall, besides settling the engine agreement, was to watch the mining adventures themselves, in which by this time Boulton and Watt had become largely interested. In the then depressed state of the mining interest, it was in many cases found difficult to raise the requisite money to pay for the new engines; and the engineers must either go without orders or become shareholders to prevent the undertakings dropping through altogether. Watt's caution impelled him at first to decline entering into such speculations. He was already in despair at what he considered the bad fortunes of the firm, and the load of debts they had incurred in carrying on the manufacture of engines. But there seemed to be no alternative, and he at length came to the conclusion with Boulton, that it was better "not to lose a sheep for a ha'porth of tar."

Rather than lose the orders, therefore, or risk the losses involved by the closing of the mines worked by their engines, the partners resolved to incur the risk of joining in the adventures, and in course of time they became largely interested in them. They also induced friends in the North to join them, more particularly Josiah Wedgwood and John Wilkinson, who took shares to a large amount.

Boulton now made it his business to attend the meetings of the adventurers, in the hope of improving their working arrangements, which he believed were very imperfect. He was convinced of this after his first meeting with the adventurers of the Wheal Virgin mine. He found their proceedings conducted without regard to order. The principal attention was paid to the dining, and after dinner and drink little real business could be done. No minutes were made of the proceedings; half the company were talking at the same time on different subjects; no one took the lead in conducting the discussions, which were disorderly and anarchical in the extreme. Boulton immediately addressed himself to the work of introducing order and despatch. He called upon his brother adventurers to do their business first, and dine and talk afterwards. He advised them to procure a minute-book in which to enter the resolutions and proceedings. His clear-headed suggestions were at once agreed to and the next meeting, for which he prepared the agenda, was so entirely different from all that had preceded it, in respect of order, regularity, and the business transacted, that his influence with the adventurers was at once established. "The business," he wrote to Watt, "was conducted with more regularity, and more of it was done, than was ever known at any previous meeting." He perceived, however, that there was still room for great improvements, and added, "somebody must be here all next summer. . . I shall be here myself the greater part of it, for there will want more kicking than you can do. . . . Grace au Dieu! I neither want health, nor spirits, nor even flesh, for I grow fat."

To increase his influence among the adventurers, and secure the advantages of a local habitation among them, Boulton deemed it necessary to take a mansion capable of accommodating his family, and which should serve the same purpose for his partner when sojourning in the neighbourhood. Boulton's first idea was to have a portable wooden house built and fitted up in the manner of a ship's cabin, which might readily be taken to pieces and moved from place to place as business required. This plan was, however, eventually abandoned in favour of a residence of a more fixed kind. After much searching, a house was found which promised to answer the intended purpose, an old-fashioned, roomy mansion, with a good-sized garden full of fruit trees, prettily situated at Cosgarne, in the Gwennap valley. Though the United Mines district was close at hand, and fourteen of Boulton and Watt's engines were at work in the immediate neighbourhood, not an engine chimney was to be seen from the house, which overlooked Tresamble Common, then an unenclosed moor. Here the partners by turns spend much of their time for several successive years, travelling about from thence on horseback from mine to mine to superintend the erection and working of their engines. By this time the old Newcomen engines had been almost completely superseded, only one of that construction remaining at work in the whole county of Cornwall. The prospects of the engine business were, indeed, so promising, that Boulton even contemplated retiring altogether from his other branches of business at Soho, and settling, himself permanently in Cornwall.

Notwithstanding the great demand for engines, the firm continued for some time in serious straits for money, and Boulton was under the necessity of resorting to all manner of expedients to raise it, sometimes with Watt's concurrence, but oftener without. Watt's inexperience in money matters, conjoined with his extreme timidity and nervousness, made him apprehend ruin and bankruptcy from every fresh proposition made to him on the subject of raising money. He was kept so utterly wretched by his fears as to be on occasions quite unmanned, and he would brood for days together on the accumulation of misery and anxiety which his great invention had brought upon him. His wife was kept almost as miserable as himself, and as Matthew Boulton was the only person, in her opinion, who could help him Out of his troubles, she privately appealed to him in the most pathetic terms:—

"I know," she wrote, "the goodness of your heart will readily forgive me for this freedom, and your friendship for Mr. Watt will, I and sure, excuse me for pointing out a few things that press upon his mind. I am very sorry to tell you that both his health and spirits have been much worse since you left Soho. It is all that I can do to keep him from sinking under that fatal depression. Whether the badness of his health is owing to the lowness of his spirits, or the lowness of his spirits to his bad health, I cannot pretend to tell. But this I know, that there are several things that prey so upon his mind as to render him perfectly miserable. You know the bond that he is engaged in to Vere's house has been the source of great uneasiness to him. It is still so, and the thought of it bows him down to the very ground. He thinks that company has used both you and him very ill in refusing to release him, when you can give them security for a vast deal more than you are bound for. Forgive me, dear Sir, if I express myself wrong. It is a subject I am not used to write on. I know if you can you will set his mind at rest on this affair. I need not tell you that the seeing him so very unhappy must of consequence make me so. There is another affair that sits very heavy on his mind; that is, some old accounts that have remained unsettled since the commencement of the business. They never come across his mind but he is rendered unfit for doing anything for a long time. A thousand times have I begged him to mention them to you. . . . I am sure he would suffer every kind of anxiety rather than ask you to do a thing you seemed not to approve of. I know the humanity of your nature would make you cheerfully give relief to any of the human race that was in distress, as far as was within your power. The knowledge of this makes me happy in the thought that you will exert every nerve to give ease to the mind of your friend. Believe me, there is not on earth a person who is dearer to him than you are. It causes him pain to give you trouble. The badness of his constitution, and his natural dislike to business, make him leave many things undone that he knows ought to be done, and, when it is perhaps too late, to make himself unhappy at their being neglected. . . . In his present state of weakness, every ill, however trifling, appears of a gigantic size, while on the other hand every good is diminished. Again, I repeat, that from the certain knowledge I have of his temper, nothing could contribute more to his happiness and make him go on cheerfully with business than having everything finished as be goes along and have no unsettled scores to look back to and brood over in his mind."

Mrs. Watt concluded by entreating that no mention would be made to her husband of her having written this letter, as it would only give him pain, and explaining that she had adopted the expedient merely in the hope that something might be done to alleviate his sufferings. This, however, was a very difficult thing to do. Boulton could remind his hopeless partner of the orders coming in for engines, and that such orders meant prosperity, not ruin but he could not alter the condition of a mind essentially morbid. Boulton was himself really in far greater straits than Watt. He had risked his whole fortune on the enterprise and besides finding money for buildings, plant, wages, materials, and credits, he was maintaining Watt until the engine business became productive. We find from the annual balance-sheets that Watt was regularly paid £330 a year, which was charged upon the hardware business; and that this continued down to the year 1785. Till then everything had been out-go; the profits were all to come. It was estimated that upwards of £40,000 were invested in the engine business before it began to yield profits; and all this was found by Boulton. In one of his letters to Matthews he wrote, "I find myself in the character of P, pay for all," but so long as his credit held good, Watt's maintenance was secure.

So soon, however, as it became clear that the enterprise would be a success, and that the demand for engines must shortly become national, the firm was threatened with a danger of another kind, which occasioned almost as much alarm to Boulton as it did to Watt. This was the movement set on foot in Cornwall and elsewhere with the object or upsetting their patent. Had the engine been a useless invention, no one could have questioned their right of property in it; but being recognised as of boundless utility, it began to be urged that the public ought to he free to use it without paying for it. It was alleged that it had become indispensable for the proper working of the mines, and that the abolition of the patent right would be an immense boon to the mining interest, and enable them to work the ores at a much reduced cost, while the general industry of the country would also be greatly benefited.

When Boulton wrote Watt from Cornwall, informing him that the Cornishmen were agitating the repeal of the special Act, by which their patent had been extended, and getting up petitions with that object, Watt replied, "I suspected some such move as this; and you may depend upon it they will never be easy while they pay us anything. This is a match of all Cornwall against Boulton and Watt; and though we may be the better players, yet they can hold longer out. However, if we do die, let us die hard."

But would Parliament really take away that right of property in the invention which they had granted, and deprive Watt and his partner of the fruits of their long labour and anxiety, and their heavy outlay, now that the superiority of the engine had become established? Would the legislature consign them to certain ruin because it would be for the advantage of the Cornish miners to have the use of the invention without paving for it? Watt would not for a moment believe this, and both he and Boulton felt strong in the conviction that their patent right would be maintained.

Time was, when Watt would have gladly parted with his invention for a very small sum, and made the engine free to all, so far as he was concerned. Even after it had been perfected at Soho, after repeated and costly experiments, he declared his willingness to sell all his interest in it for £7,000, which would have barely remunerated him for the time and labour he had bestowed upon it, then extending over nearly twenty years of the best period of his life. And now, after six years of the partnership had run, and the heavy expenditure incurred by Boulton in introducing the engine was still unproductive, he regarded it as cruel in the extreme to attempt to deprive him of his just reward. To Boulton he disburdened himself fully, in strong and sometimes bitter terms. "They charge us," he said, "with establishing a monopoly, but if a monopoly, it is one by means of which their mines are made more productive than ever they were before. Have we not given over to them two-thirds of the advantages derivable from its use in the saving of fuel, and reserved only one-third to ourselves, though even that has been still further reduced to meet the pressure of the times? They say it is inconvenient for the mining interest to be burdened with the payment of engine dues; just as it is inconvenient for the person who wishes to get at my purse that I should keep my breeches-pocket buttoned. It is doubtless also very inconvenient for the man who wishes to get a slice of the squire's land, that there should he a law tying it up by an entail. Yet the squire's land has not been of his own making, as the condensing engine has been of mine. He has only passively inherited his property, while this invention has been the product of my own labour, and of God knows bow much anguish of mind and body;"-

"Why don't they," he asked, "petition Parliament to take Sir Francis Bassett's mines from him? He acknowledges that he has derived great profits from using our engines, which is more than we can say of our invention; for it appears by our books that Cornwall has hitherto eaten up all the profits we have drawn from it, as well as all that we have got from other places, and a good sum of our own money into the bargain. We have no power to compel anybody to erect our engines. What, then, will Parliament say to any man who comes there to complain of a grievance he can avoid, and which does not exist but in his own imagination? Will Parliament give away our property without an equivalent? Will they not collect that equivalent from the county of Cornwall? Will they adjudge them to pay us any less sum than it has cost ourselves? Will they not further add some reward for the quantity of life that has been devoted to the pursuit of what is evidently for the advantage of others, but hitherto has not been for our own? Lastly, will Parliament compel us to work for anybody without a remuneration adequate to our experience, or will they oblige us to labour for any one without our consent? We are in the state of the old Roman who was found guilty of raising better crops than his neighbours, and was therefore ordered to bring before the assembly of the people his instruments of husbandry, and to tell them of his art. He complied, and when he had done said, ‘These O Romans, are the instruments of our art; but I cannot bring into the forum the labours, the sweats, the watchings, the anxieties, the cares, which produced these crops.’ So, every one sees the reward which we may yet probably receive from our labours; but few consider the price we have paid for that reward, which is by no means a certain annuity, but a return of the most precarious sort. To put an end, as far as lies in my power, to all disputes with the people of Cornwall, let them pay my debts and give me a reasonable sum for the time I have lost, and I will resign my part in their favour, and think myself well off by the bargain. Or, if you can find any man who is agreeable to yourself, I’ll sell him my share on reasonable terms, and, like the sailor, I will promise to contrive no more fire-engines. In short, my dear Sir, with a good cause in hand, I do not fear going before Parliament or anywhere. I am sure that if they did anything they would put us in a better position than we are in now."

The petition to Parliament, though much talked about, was not, however, presented; and, the schemers who envied Boulton and Watt the gains which they had now the prospect of deriving from the use of their engine, shortly after resorted to other means of participating in them, to which we shall hereafter refer. In the mean time Boulton, at the urgent entreaty of Watt, who described himself as "loaded to 12 lbs. on the inch," returned to Birmingham; though he had scarcely left before urgent entreaties were sent after him that he must come back again to Cornwall.

While Boulton was in Cornwall, the principal manufacturers of Birmingham, dissatisfied with the bad and dear supply of copper, resolved to form themselves into a company for the purpose of making brass and spelter; and they wrote to Boulton offering to raise the requisite means, provided he would take the lead in the management of the concern. He could not but feel gratified at this best of all proofs of the esteem in which his townsmen held him, and of their confidence in his business qualities. Boulton, however, declined to undertake so large an addition to his labours. He felt that he would soon be an old man, and that it would be necessary for him to contract rather than extend the field of his operations; besides, the engine business was already sufficiently prosperous to induce him to devote to it the chief share of his attention. But he promised to his Birmingham friends that he would always be glad to give them his best advice and assistance. He accordingly furnished them with a plan of operations, and drew up a scheme for their consideration, which was unanimously adopted, and the whole of the share capital was at once subscribed for. He also made arrangements with his Cornish friends for a regular supply of copper direct from the mines on the best terms. On his return to Birmingham, we find him entering upon an elaborate series of experiments, to determine the best constituents of brass; in the course of which be personally visited the principal calamine works in Wales and Derbyshire, for the purpose of testing their different produce. He diligently read all the treatises on the subject, and made inquiries as to the practice adopted in foreign countries. Finding, however, that the continuance of his connexion with the brass company was absorbing more of his time than he could afford to bestow upon it, be shortly withdrew from the concern, — partly also, because he was dissatisfied with what he considered the illiberal manner in which the managing committee were conducting its affairs.

Another subject which occupied much of Boulton's attention about the same time, was the improvement of engine boilers. At an early period he introduced tubes in them, through which the heated air of the furnace passed, thereby greatly increasing the heating surface and enabling steam to be raised more easily and rapidly. We find him in correspondence with Watt on the subject, while residing at Redruth in the autumn of 1780. He first suggested iron tubes but Watt wrote, "I cannot advise iron for the tubes of boilers, but they may be thought of." Next Boulton suggested the employment of copper tubes to which Watt replied, "I approve of what you observe, about making copper flanches to the boiler pipe in future, and Ale and Cakes can easily be converted to that way whenever they put up a second boiler." We find Boulton introducing four copper tubes 20 inches in diameter into the Wheal Busy boiler, which was 26 feet in length, — the fire passing through two of the tubes, and returning through the other two. Here, therefore, we have Boulton anticipating the invention of the tubular boiler, and clearly adopting it in practice, before the existence of the locomotive, for which it was afterwards re-invented. In fact, the multitubular boiler is but a modification and extension of Boulton's principle, as applied by him at so early a period in the Cornish boilers.

The numerous MS. books left by Boulton show the care with which he made his experiments, and the scrupulousness with which he recorded the results. Copies of his observations and experiments on boilers were sent to Watt, to be entered by him in "the calculation book," in which was recorded the tabulated experience of the firm. Boulton was also an excellent mechanical draughtsman, as appears from his tablets, which contain a number of beautifully executed drawings of engines and machinery, with very copious and minutely-written instructions for erecting them. Some of the drawings of sugar-mills are especially well executed, and delicately coloured. A rough sketch is given in one of the books, with a written explanation in Boulton's hand, of a mode of applying power in taking canal-boats through tunnels. It consists of an engine-boat, with toothed claws attached to it for the purpose of catching, metal racks fastened along the sides of the tunnel, such being his design for working boats upon canals. While in Cornwall, he occupied his evenings in drawing sections of various mines, showing the adits, and the method of applying the pumping machinery, to which were also added numerous elaborate calculations of the results of engine working. He also continued to devise improvements in the construction and working of the steam-engine, on which subject he exchanged his views with Watt at great length. In one of his letters he says: "I like your plan of making all the principal wearing parts of tempered steel, and the racks of best Swedish iron, with the teeth cut out. Query: Would it not be worth while to make a machine for dividing and cutting the teeth in good form out of sectors? The iron would be less strained by that mode of cutting." At other times, when the steam-engine subject seemed exhausted, he proceeded with the designing of road-carriages, in which he was an adept, filling a quarto drawing-book, entitled ‘Thoughts on Carriages,' with sketches of different kinds of vehicles, some in pencil and Indian ink, and others in colours, beautifully finished. Such were the leisure employments of this indefatigably industrious man.

See Also

• Lives of Boulton and Watt by Samuel Smiles
• Lives of Boulton and Watt by Samuel Smiles: Chapter 13
• Lives of Boulton and Watt by Samuel Smiles: Chapter 15