The Emperor has already given you a testimonial of his high esteem when he conferred upon you, more than a year ago, the decoration of a Chevalier of his order of the Legion of Honor.  You will find a new mark of it in the initiative which his Majesty wished that his government should take in this conjuncture; and the decision that I charge myself to bring to your knowledge is a brilliant proof of the eager and sympathetic adhesion that his proposition has met with from the States I have just enumerated.

I pray you to accept on this occasion, sir, my personal congratulations, as well as the assurance of my sentiments of the most distinguished consideration.

While this letter is dated September 1, the amount of the gratuity agreed upon seems to have been made known soon after the first meeting of the convention, for on April 29, the following letter was written to Morse by M. van den Broek, his agent in all the preliminaries leading up to the convention, and who, by the way, was to receive as his commission one third of the amount of the award, whatever it might be:  “I have this morning seen the secretary of the Minister, and from him learned that the sum definitely fixed is 400,000 francs, payable in four years.  This does not by any means answer our expectations, and I am afraid you will be much disappointed, yet I used every exertion in my power, but without avail, to procure a grant of a larger sum.”

It certainly was a pitiful return for the millions of dollars which Morse’s invention had saved or earned for those nations which used it as a government monopoly, and while I find no note of complaint in his own letters, his friends were more outspoken.  Mr. Kendall, in a letter of May 18, exclaims:  “I know not how to express my contempt of the meanness of the European Governments in the award they propose to make you as the inventor of the Telegraph.  I had set the sum at half a million dollars as the least that they could feel to be at all compatible with their dignity.  I hope you will acknowledge it more as a tribute to the merits of your invention than as an adequate reward for it.”

And in a letter of June 5, answering one of Morse’s which must have contained some expressions of gratitude, Mr. Kendall says further:  “In reference to the second subject of your letter, I have to say that it is only as a tribute to the superiority of your invention that the European grant can, in my opinion, be considered either ‘generous’ or ‘magnanimous.’  As an indemnity it is niggardly and mean.”

It will be in place to record here the testimonials of the different nations of Europe to the Inventor of the Telegraph, manifested in various forms:—­

France. A contributor to the honorary gratuity, and the decoration of the Legion of Honor.

Prussia. The Scientific Gold Medal of Prussia set in the lid of a gold snuff-box.

Austria. A contributor to the honorary gratuity, and the Scientific Gold Medal of Austria.