Will any man of the least particle of

NAVIGATION. 1063

understanding allow, that this private work shall be admitted to contain sufficient evidence to overset the public works of a fair and open artist? Surely not -- If it was once allowed, men would not be wanting to swear away from the real inventor, the most valuable discoveries in the world. All they would desire from' the public claimant would be, for him to fix the earliest date to his discovery, and if it was 20 or even 50 years back they would prove that they themselves, their fathers or grandfathers, or some distant friend, had communicated it many years before. -- There is no end to this kind of proof ; and both reason and law unite in defending the first public discoverer. -- It would be dangerous in the highest degree to deviate from this rule. -- If M"^" Rumsey did really and in good faith and conscience intend to carry into execution, the secret he communicated to General Washington, I can only say he was unlucky in delaying it so long, as to let me, with my subsequent discoveries, come forward before him; what I did was public -- it was notorious to all Virginia and Maryland and not a murmur was raised against me, not a syllable uttered (that ever I heard) charging me with interfering with M'' Rumsey. -- The Assemblies of Virginia and Maryland encouraged my scheme, and nobody told me I should interfere with him. -- My petitions laid long before the Assembly of Virginia, and a law was ultimately passed in my favour, without objection or complaint. M'" Rumsey has insinuated that I got my first thought from Captain Bedinger in Kentucky, who went there in ]784 -- nay he goes so far in one place^ as to say, he "Was told so" and in another that " Circumstances leave little room to doubt it." I have already declared that I have not been in Kentcky since the year 1781 : thus falls to the ground this part of his " Plagiarism" allegations -- But I will suggest to him, that it is much more probable, that all his determinations of beginning his Steam-engine, might have come to him in a much straighter line, than from Kentucky to me.