It is but seldom that extracts have been made from Mr. Brunel’s private journals; but it may be permitted, in illustration of what has been said on this point, to give the following passage, written during the great contests of the year 1846.
May 5, 1846.
I am just returned from spending an evening with R. Stephenson. It is very delightful, in the midst of our incessant personal professional contests, carried to the extreme limit of fair opposition, to meet him on a perfectly friendly footing, and discuss engineering points.... Again I cannot help recording the great pleasure I derive from these occasional though rare meetings.
Mr. Brunel’s opinions on the working of the patent laws will be given below, as following more fitly after extracts from his correspondence relating to the position of his profession in regard to the Government; but, before entering upon that subject, a few words may be said in reference to a class of persons who formed a very large proportion of his correspondents—the class of ‘Inventors.’
He used to receive numerous applications from persons who had invented, or who thought they had invented, some useful contrivance, from a locomotive which would save fifty per cent. in fuel over those then in use, to a machine which, as Mr. Brunel assured its inventor, ‘would not even have a tendency to move.’ He was always ready to encourage inventions which seemed likely to produce good results, and to enquire into their merits, if they were patented; but not otherwise, lest it should be said that confidence had been placed in him.
The following is one of the many letters he had to write in answer to requests of this nature.
September 17, 1847.
I could not have complied with your request of giving any opinion upon the merits of the invention. Simple as such an act may be, it too frequently involves one in controversy; and I never found, before I made the rule not to give opinions, that my advice was ever followed, if it was to discourage the inventor from further expense and trouble.
I should tell you in this case that the idea of dovetailing, which in your first letter I find was the principle of the invention, had long before been worked out in every shape and form that ingenuity or blundering could possibly give it.
Upon the important question how far, if at all, the practice of civil engineers should be subject to State control, Mr. Brunel held very decided views. He was strongly opposed both to any interference on the part of the State with the freedom of civil engineers in the conduct of their professional work, and to the recognition of merit by the bestowal of honours or rewards.