“I know,” she wrote, “the goodness of your heart will readily forgive me for this freedom, and your friendship for Mr. Watt will, I am 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 he goes along, and have no unsettled scores to look back to and brood over in his mind.”[197]
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 330l. 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 40,000l. 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 of 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 be 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.”[198]
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 paying 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 7000l., 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 be 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 how 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.”[199]
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.[200]
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 he 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, he 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.”[201] 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 pipes 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.