“Mr. Kendall informs me that no assignment of an interest in my second patent (the patent of 1846) was ever made to you.  This was news to me.  I presumed it was done and that the assignment was duly recorded at the Patent Office.  The examination of the records in the progress of obtaining my extension has, doubtless, led to the discovery of the omission.”

After going over much the same ground in the letter to George Vail, also of July 15th, he gives as one of the reasons why the new arrangement is better:  “The annoyances of Smith are at an end, so far as the necessity of consulting him is concerned.”

And then he adds:—­

“I presume it can be no matter of regret with Alfred that, by the position he now takes, strengthening our defensive position against the annoyances of Smith, he can receive more pecuniarily than he could before.  Please consult with Mr. Kendall on the form of any agreement by which you and Alfred may be properly secured in the pecuniary benefits which you would have were he to stand in the same legal relation to the patent that he did before the expiration of its original term, so as to give me the position in regard to Smith that I must take in self-defense, and I shall cheerfully accede to it.

“Poor Alfred, I regret to know, torments himself needlessly.  I had hoped that I was sufficiently known to him to have his confidence.  I have never had other than kind feelings towards him, and, while planning for his benefit and guarding his interests at great and almost ruinous expense to myself, I have had to contend with difficulties which his imprudence, arising from morbid suspicions, has often created.  My wish has ever been to act towards him not merely justly but generously.”

In a letter to Mr. Kendall of July 17, 1854, Morse declares his intention of publishing that “Defense” which he had held in reserve for several years, hoping that the necessity for its publication might be avoided by a personal understanding with Professor Henry, which, however, that gentleman refused:—­

“You will perceive what injury I have suffered from the machinations of the sordid pirates against whom I have had to contend, and it will also be noticed how history has been falsified in order to detract from me, and how the conduct of Henry, on his deposition, has tended to strengthen the ready prejudice of the English against the American claim to priority.  An increasing necessity, on this account, arises for my ‘Defense,’ and so soon as I can get it into proper shape by revision, I intend to publish it.

“This I consider a duty I owe the country more than myself, for, so far as I am personally concerned, I am conscious of a position that History will give me when the facts now suppressed by interested pirates and their abettors shall be known, which the verdict of posterity, no less than that of the judicial tribunals already given, is sure to award.”