By the respectable testimony of his excellency General Washington, No. 13 ; by Governor Johnson, No. 14, and by certificates and affidavits from many other gentlemen, hereunto annexed, I prove my idea was nearly matured, before steam had ever entered his imagination, by his own confession to Governor Johnson, No. 14. Nor. was my priority unknown to Mr. Fitch, for General Washington informed him, " though he thought himself not at liberty to disclose my principles, yet he would assure him his thought was not original, and that I had mentioned the application of steam to him before." (No. 14) and therefore he declined giving Mr Fitch an introductory letter to the Assembly of Virginia. What dependance can the public put in the promises of a man, who has knowingly and unprovokedly (for I never saw Mr. Fitch) treated an individual so unworthily. Now- I can, with truth assure the pftblic, that jNIr. Fitch's boat so loaded with machinery, complexity and expense, (granting his machine all the properties he ascribed to it in his publication) can never be useful; as his machine, by his own publications, allowing for frictions and the necessary slipping of his paddles through the water, will not propel his boat, at the rate of more than three miles in an hour, where no current opposes.

If Mr. Fitch did not get his first idea of a steamboat from what Capt. Bedinger said respecting mine, at Kentucky (which circumstances leave little room to doubt) and thought himself justified in making an application of it to his own advantage, as it was not delivered to him in confidence, yet surely nothing can be said in his defence, for endeavouring to rob the first inventor of his right, and by