Invention is not a thing in a man’s power, and great inventions are generally more the effect of accident than of superior abilities; at any rate, no encouragement is certain to produce invention, but it always will produce improvement on invention.  When a man has a patent for fourteen years, he does every thing in his power to make the object of that patent become as generally useful as possible, and this is only to be done by carrying the improvements as far as he is able. {208} Others, again, who have no patent, but are of the same trade, endeavour to preserve their business by improvement, and to this contest in excellence may be attributed the great progress, made in England, in bringing manufactures to a higher degree of perfection than in any other country.

The great inventions, from which others branch out and spring, are not due, it has often been asserted, to natives of this country.  Probably this may be owing to the circumstance, that they were known before the advancement of this country in any of the arts; but let that be as it may, there are a vast number of inventions carried to greater

—–­ {208} This is sufficiently important to deserve to be illustrated by some examples.  The improvement of the steam-engine, by Mr. Watt, was a matter of accident; an accident, indeed, that could not have happened, had he been an ignorant man; but the improvement of it was not accidental.  It was, in consequence of great encouragement given, and to the prolongation of the patent, by an express act of parliament.  This patent has been the occasion of almost totally changing the machine, and of extending its use to a vast variety of objects, to which it probably might never have been extended, had it not been the sole business of a very able man, aided by a number of other ingenious persons, whom he was enabled to employ.  It was the cause of improving the mechanism of mills for grinding corn, and others of different descriptions, far beyond what they had been, although the most able engineer in that line (Mr. Smeaton) died before the last and greatest improvements were made.

The same thing may be observed of the cotton-spinning-machines, and with a little difference of all the inventions that have been brought to perfection, under the influence of exclusive privileges. -=-

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perfection, and turned to more advantage in this country than in any other.

This advantage, which England enjoys over other countries, is a more solid one than it appears to be, for it is intimately connected with the government and laws of the country, and with that spirit which sees the law well administered, which, in the case of patents, is a matter of no small difficulty, and prevents others from becoming our rivals, or attaining the same degree of perfection; {209} for, unless the law is well administered, there can never be the great exertion that is necessary to create excellence.