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excluded as yet from Russia, will, ere long, be extended to that vast empire. A bird hatched on the Hudson will soon people the floods of the Wolga, and cygnets descended from an American swan glide along the surface of the Caspian sea. Then the hoary genius of Asia, high throned on the peaks of Caucasus, his moist eye glistening while it glances over the ruins of Babylon, Persepolis, Jerusalem, and Palmyra, shall bow with grateful reverence to the inventive spirit of this western world.'-p. 368.

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With this genuine burst of native eloquence, (in which the modest simplicity of the prose is so beautifully set off by the fervid wildness of the poetry,) we shall not meddle further than to observe that we are almost malicious enough to wish the daring' Benjamin were alive to see with what little ceremony his admiring countrymen have dove-tailed him in between two worthies, one of whom he has himself designated, in his correspondence, as a most dogmatical, overbearing, and disagreeable fellow, who gave himself airs because he had acquired a smattering of mathematics; the other, a man of very humble claims to genius, possessing just talent enough to apply the inventions of others to his own purposes; and, in such application, not always actuated by the most honourable principles.

Our readers will not expect us to enter into the unimportant history of a man of whom his friend and biographer confesses that he can find nothing material to record, from the first year of his life to the fortieth. In fact, we should not have called their attention to the work at all, were it not that the character of this country is, in some measure, affected by the disingenuity of the writer. Omitting, therefore, the topics which more immediately interest the people of America, we shall confine the few observations for which we can find leisure, to the two subjects which bring us into contact with Mr. Fulton-torpedos and steam-boats.

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After some common-place whining about the freedom of the seas, and the necessity which the United States would be under of 'establishing a navy,' Mr. Fulton, we are informed, began to turn his whole attention to find out the means of destroying such engines of oppression,' as he considered ships of war to be: and out of these enlarged and philanthropic views and reflections (exclaims his biographer) grew Mr. Fulton's inventions for sub-marine navigation and explosions'! There is no disputing about taste: This philanthropic' gentleman, who speaks with such horror of ships of war, (they are, to be sure, British ships of war,) dwells with the most complacent feelings on the construction and employment of those infernal machines, against which no human foresight can guard.' They are (he says) useful and honourable amusements, and the most rational source of my happiness.'

Mr. Fulton's engine, that was, in his own words, to blow a

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whole ship's company into the air,' was called a torpedo or nautilus; it was nothing more than a chest containing a certain quantity of gunpowder, which, by means of some clock machinery, might be ignited at a given time under water, and, being placed under a ship's bottom, destroy her by the explosion. Such an application of gunpowder was no new invention. Before the name of Fulton was ever heard of, the effect of exploding gunpowder under water was well known; and one Bushnell had made several attempts to apply it as the means of hostility during the American revolutionary war-but unsuccessfully. It is, in fact, something like the scheme of children to catch swallows by applying salt to their tails.

Mr. Fulton offered his invention, first to the French Directory, but they rejected it: then, to the Dutch government, but the Dutch would have nothing to say to him. Meanwhile Buonaparte became First Consul, and Mr. Fulton hastened to address his proposals to that great man: this succinct mode of murder en masse suited his tranchant genius; and accordingly citizens Volney, Monge, and La Place were appointed to examine the plan. The result was, that Mr. Fulton was sent to Brest, under a promise of destroying our blockading squadron, but did nothing; he was then given to understand that the French government had no further occasion for his services; or, to use the words of his biographer, the French ministers shewed a disposition not to fulfil their engagements with Mr. Fulton.'

It may not be amiss to notice a circumstance here which has unluckily escaped the observation of Mr. Cadwallader Colden. Fulton had been treated in this country with unreserved confidence and kindness; he had been permitted to reside at Birmingham for eighteen months; and he had received patents for various pieces of useful machinery. With these in his pocket he hastens to France, where he meets with nothing but contempt and insult; in spite of which he perseveres, with a degree of humility worthy of Joel Barlow himself, to press his services on the French, and beg that he may be graciously allowed to assist in the destruction of England.

"Through the whole season of 1810,' says his delighted biographer, 'did Mr. Fulton watch the English ships off Brest; but though some of them daily approached, yet none came so near as to be exposed to the effect of his attempts. In one instance he came near a British 74, but she changed her position just in time to save herself from being blown into the air.'-p. 4.

Finding himself thus slighted in France, and in Holland, he seems at length to have recollected an old intimacy (which commenced on some canal scheme) with the late Lord Stanhope, and contrived to apprize this second Roger Bacon of his formidable invention. Mystery and paradox never failed to throw a spell round

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Lord Stanhope. He spoke with awful forebodings, in the House of Lords, of the sub-marine preparations which were to blow the English fleet to atoms, without the possibility of its offering the least resistance-of an avatar of Archimedes in the shape of an American engineer, &c.; the result of all which was, if we are to credit Mr. Cadwallader Colden, a communication from Lord Sidmouth to Mr. Fulton, which had for its object to deprive France of the benefit of his invention and services, (which, be it observed, had been already rejected,) and give England the advantage of them, by inducing him to withdraw from France.' 'Many have thought,' says his biographer, that consistency and morality did not leave Mr. Fulton at liberty to listen to these proposals;' but this only proves that these scrupulous reasoners entered very little into the sublime views which influenced the conduct of Mr. Fulton-he, good man, was persuaded that his conduct, on this occasion, if rightly considered, would not only be pronounced excusable, but justifiable, and even meritorious; for he actually hoped that, by England's adopting his infernal machines, she would work out her own destruction, and thus an end would eventually be put to that maritime superiority with which they were contending for the dominion of the eastern world.' Such pure and patriotic motives are more than sufficient to canonize Mr. Fulton in the hearts of his countrymeu; and his conscientious and consistent friend Cadwallader might therefore have spared his apology. But such was the advantage' to be conferred on England!

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We remember how greatly the late Mr. Pitt and Lord Melville were ridiculed in the opposition journals for the supposed encouragement given to the Catamaran expedition, as the trial of Fulton's machines against the Boulogne flotilla was called. It now appears that it was a legacy left to them by their predecessors in office, and so left as not to be shaken off in a moment; for it is well known that, when a projector is once fairly fastened upon a patron, and more especially if that patron be a minister, he clings to him like a leech.

Lord St. Vincent, however, appears to have set his face against this unworthy mode of warfare; feeling, as we believe every British officer would feel, that, setting aside the intent, such devices were for the weak, and not for the strong. Fulton says, 'I explained to him a torpedo: he reflected for some time, and then said, " Pitt was the greatest fool that ever existed to encourage a mode of war which they who commanded the seas did not want;" but Mr. Fulton soon found that Pitt' was no such fool. To satisfy his noisy relation in the House of Lords, he appointed, it is true, a commission to examine Mr. Fulton's projects. It consisted of Sir Joseph Banks, Mr. Cavendish, Sir Home Popham, Major Con

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greve, and Mr. John Rennie. Friend Cadwallader' complains that many weeks passed before Mr. Fulton could prevail upon them to do any thing, and, finally, that when they met, without calling on him for any explanation, they reported against the marine boat as being impracticable. Now this we KNOW to be false. The commissioners never saw Fulton, never knew any thing of Fulton;-a packet of sealed papers and drawings were sent to them as coming from a person of the name of Francis, and on these documents alone they delivered, as they were desired to do, and as all who know them personally or by reputation will readily admit they would do, a sound and honest opinion.

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We now find that, in the first interview which Mr. Fulton had with Mr. Pitt and Lord Melville, the latter condemned the torpedo without a moment's consideration.' In his own mind we dare say he did condemn it, as every man of sense and honour would; but at the same time, out of deference to those who had been instrumental in bringing the proprietor into this country, he did not object to afford him the means of making a harmless experiment on the powers of his machine. He was accordingly allowed to operate on an old Danish brig in Walmer Roads; and, with the assistance of Sir Home Popham and two boats' crews, succeeded, after an unresisted attack of two days, in blowing up this poor old carcass.

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It is not true, however, as stated by the author, that Mr. Pitt and Lord Melville entered into any engagement with him; and therefore 'Lord Grenville and his cabinet' could not be unwilling to fulfil the engagements which their predecessors had made.' Indeed, so far from any engagement' on the part of the British government, his biographer himself says, that when it was proposed that he should, for a considerable reward, suppress his inventions, so that they might be buried, and that neither his own country nor the rest of the world could derive from them those advantages which he thought they would afford, he indignantly rejected the overture.'

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The tone of humanity and justice adopted by this vagrant adventurer is quite intolerable. Having failed in selling his infernal machines, first to the French, next to the Dutch, and lastly to the English, he sets himself to prove, in a high stream of moral pathos, that 'blowing up ships of war (so as not to leave a man to relate the dreadful catastrophe) are humane experiments! We ought not to wonder, after this, perhaps, that the character of Mr. Fulton has survived in America as that of an honest, conscientious, and consistent man, especially as Mr. Cadwallader Colden has materially supported his claim to it by the gratuitous insertion of two documents; the first, addressed to Lord Melville in 1804, in which, speaking of the tyrannic principles of Buonaparte, who had set himself above all law,' Mr. Fulton adds, he is therefore in that state which Lord

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Somers compares to that of a wild beast, unrestrained by any rule, and he should be hunted down as the enemy of mankind. This however is the business of Frenchmen: with regard to the nations of Europe, they can only hold him in governable limits by fencing him round with bayonets.' The second, written in 1810, and addressed to the President of the United States, in which, after earnestly recommending the adoption of the torpedo system' by France, he thus proceeds then the Emperor of France (the wild beast' just mentioned) would have a noble opportunity to display a magnanimity of soul, a goodness of heart, which would add lustre to his great actions, and secure to him the admiration of the civilized world.'

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It is not however the invention of the torpedo system that has enrolled the name of Fulton as the third in the list of transatlantic worthies, so much, perhaps, as the 'establishment of navigation by steam, for which,' says his biographer, we and all the world are indebted to him.' This is supposed to be proved by a letter from Lord Stanhope, dated in 1798, in answer to one respecting the moving of ships by the means of steam;' which however appears to be nothing new to his lordship, for he observes- it is a subject on which I have made important discoveries.' But the fact is, that neither Mr. Fulton nor Lord Stanhope has the slightest pretension to the discovery of a method for propelling boats by steam; several attempts, and successful ones too, having been made many years before either of them had thought of the subject. Fulton, though considered by those of his own profession, in this country, as a person of very slender abilities, yet possessed sufficient shrewdness to avail himself of the invention of another, and did not want the talent occasionally to improve it; and it is certain that if he had conceived any distinct idea of rendering practicable the navigation of boats by steam in 1793, he would not have omitted the mention of it in his treatise on Canal Navigation,' published in London in 1796, in which all sorts of boats and locks, and levels and inclined planes, and every aid that could be devised for water communication,' are detailed with wearisome minuteness;-but in which we do not find a single hint to shew that the power of steam, as applicable to a boat, had ever entered his imagination-though the preface, which is always the part of a book last written, certainly notices his having had some communication' with Lord Stanhope on the practicability of navigating vessels by steam.

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There can be little doubt that this communication' was from and not to Lord Stanhope, as his lordship had for two or three years before the publication of Fulton's book been occupied in experiments with a steam-boat in the Greenland dock. But the idea, as we have said, did not originate with him. Patrick Miller,

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