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[Page 7]
reported to the House the following Words, "The present Act does indeed impose Conditions so difficult and so impossible to be surmounted if enforced to the utmost of which they are capable that it is feared few Artists will quit the certain Gains of their profession to enter into things so discouraging and precarious."
Now if I have come within the limits of that difficult act, how much more do I deserve the reward, and the demand which the Board has made on me to prove myself to be the Inventor after a lapse of twenty three years is surely not softening the Act, but rendering public reward on this head almost impossible to obtain. The Board examined me fifteen years back about the Invention. They were then satisfied I was the Inventor, and if Arnold had been the Inventor would he not have opposed me and enforced his Patent.
The Act demands not that I should be the Inventor. It only says it should be something not publicly known, and Brockbank (though my Opposer) has clearly proved that it was not publlcly known, besides, the principal causes of the good going of my Time Keepers depend not on the matter in question, no, they possess invisible properties not to be discovered by looking at them; and which can only be found out by long experience and uncommon attention, bring me but to the explanation and the Board will see in this, and their Error in listening to interested and ignorant men of the Trade, who who have been pirating me for many years, by causing Time keepers to be made on my Plan, and if they have gone well it is doing honor to my invention, and by selling them they have got much profit, and some honor as good workers, though they never made one in their lives, they are only Sellers of Time keepers, not makers of them, call on me to prove this, and it shall be done, what information then can they give to the Board? They have acknowledged that if the Board reward me it will injure them, by this they prove themselves to be envious malicious and interested. The Act says if I do certain things I am to be rewarded, and makes no mention of what injury it may do to the negligent and unskilful part of the Trade, and if his Majestys ships and the Commerce of this Country have nothing better to direct them, than Their Time Keepers they will soon find Rocks Sands and Lee Shores - and though the Protestor may have to boast that he saved Two thousand five hundred pounds to the Nation, that Surely will be no compensation for such dreadful consequences.
I have conformed to the demands of the Act and come within its meaning, which is more than any one ever did before; why then is the reward withheld from me. It is allowed that I have rendered great Service to Navigation and on that head the Board voted me Two thousand five hundred Pounds and promised to do more, how can they do less. I was hired and encouraged by the Board to do certain Work, and the reward they agreed to give me has been kept from me fifteen months - with just the same propriety I might refuse to pay my Workmen on Saturday night because some one told me they had