The Sun.
London, England, 1839-08-08 00:00:00

JAMES WATT.

- The long-promised historical sketch of our country-
man, Watt, by M. Arago, has jest appeared. It was
read before thke Institute of France, and from the elo-
quent and vivid description with which it abounds, the
interesting details it gives of this benefactor of the
human race, and the lucid delineations of the vast im-
provents he had carried into effect in almost every de%
partment of machinery, it must have produced a great
effect on that learned and illustrious Society. We can
find room, at present, for only two extracts—one giving
a short account of latt in his boyhood, and the other
' inveighing against Governments who heap honours and
wealth on warriors—the destroyers of thousands, while
I they pass by unnoticed the greatest benefactors of
mankind.
" James Watt," says M.Arago, "was born at Green-
ock, in Scotland, on the 19th of January, 1736. Our
neighbours on the other side of the Channel have the
good sense to consider the genealogy of an honest and
industrious man, as well worth preserving as the parch-
ments of some titled families, rendered illustrious, it
may be, only by the enormities of their crimes and
vices. By this means, lam enabled to state with cer-
tainty, that the great grandfather of James Watt was a
farmer in Aberdeenshire ; that he died in one of the
battles of Montrose ; that the victorious party (and I
m,ly add, that it is still the case in civil discords), con-
sidering that even death was insufficient expiation for
holding the opinions which the poor farmer had taken
up arms to defend, punished him in the person pi' his
eon, by confiscating his little property ; that this un-
fortunate child, Thomas Watt, was brought up by dis-
tant relations, and in the isolated condition to which he
was thus reduced, he devoted himself to serious and
arduous study, so as akt wards, in more peaceful times,
to establish himself at Greenock, where he taught ma-
thematics and the principles ofi navigation ; that he
lived in Mae suburb of Crawford's-dyke, of which he
was the baillie, an office he retained till 1734, when he
died, aged ninety-two veers. Thomas Watt had two
sons, the elder John and his brother James ; the latter
the father of our celebrated engineer, The father,
James Watt, wag long treasurer of the Town Council
of Greenock, as well as one of its baillies, and was
remarkable in his discharge of these functions for his
ardent zeal and an enlightened spirit of reform. He was
a pluralist (these three syllables, become now-a-days
in France an epithet of reproach, are no stigma on
1 the memory of James Watt)—he was a pluralist of
\ three occupations. He was purveyor of apparatus and
instruments for navigation, builder, and merchant ! un-
happily, towards the end of his life he suffered severe
losses in business, by which he lost a part of the for-
tune which he had honourably amassed ; he died in 1784,
(aged eighty-four. James 'Watt, the subject of this eloge,
was born with an extremely delicate constitution. His
e mother, whose family name was Muirhead, gave him his
i first lessons in reading. He learned writing and arith-
metic from his father. He• attended also the parish 1
school of Greenock. The humble parish schools of
Scotland have thus the right to inscribe, with a just
pride, the name of James Watt among the celebrated
men whom they have produced—just as the College
I' de la Fliche now inscribes the name of Descartes
among its ancient pupils, and the University of Cam-
bridge rejoices to this day in the name of Newton.
The continual indisposition of James Watt did not,
however, allow him to give himself up to his studies at
the school of Greenock so assiduously as was to be
desired. For a considerable part of the year he was
i confined to his chamber, and he was left to study with-
out assistance. Thus, as indeed is most common, did
his high intellectual powers, destined to bring forth
such happy fruits, first mature and develope themselves
in solitude and reflection. Watt was too much an inva-
lid to allow his parents to think for a moment of setting
him to any regular occupation. They left him entirely
at liberty to choose his own way of passing his time.
We shall see whether he made a bad use of this in-
dulgence."
Having described at length the use he made of this
iodulgenee--the improvements he made in the steam-
engine, and the effects which his inventive genius is daily
iproducing in every part of the world, he suddenly turns
to another subject, and pointing to the statue of Watt,
exclaims, " There you see, not the destroyer of thou-
sands, but the fatter, the creator of millions of human
beings, whose genius now feeds them, and performs their
labour without consuming a handful of their bread ; a
man to whose genius Great Britain now owes all her
wealth, and all her prosperity ;—then, look on the cold
marble brow of that statue, which the filial love of an
affectionate child has reared, and not a nation's grati-
tude-INA; on that uncoroneted brow—read that un-
titled nalne, and learn what a proud and aristocratic
Datum, have done for the man to whom they owe
i the wealth that feeds their pride ; that nation which
1 has raised its fortunate warriors to the highest pin-
nacles of wealth and of nobility—see what it has
done to honour this founder of its prosperity !—see
that uncoroneted brow, that unermined mantle, that
ungartered knee—look at that untitled name, and hear
of a surviving child, unhonoured and unknown, mourn-
ing in solitary dejection the ingratitude of his noble
father a country ; and while you learn that true nobility
needs no glittering gem, no gorgeous gold, to brighten
its glory, learn also, that one of the greatest nations on
the earth is governed by men who, while they squabble
for power, intrigue for place, and palter for pension, be-
stow upon political tools, on fawning courtiers, or at
best on fortunate warriors, those honours and distinc-
tions which men of noble and generous minds would hon-
our and distinguish themselves by bestowing on the bene-
factors of their country and their kind,—that the
father, as he points to the names of the noble, and the
great, and the honoured, might say to his child, thus
was it done unto the man whom it delighteth the king
to honour—go thou, and do likewise
Gentlemen ! This creator of six to eight millions of
workmen—of workmen indefatigable and industrious,
among whom the arm of authority is never called upon
to interpose for the suppression of revolt or a strike—
of artificers at a farthing a day ; this man who, by his
brilliant inventions, conferred upon England the means
of sustaining itself during a political convul,ion, where
its very existence, as a nation, was endangered—this
modern Archimedes, this benefactor of the whole
human race, whose memory future generations will
eternally bless—what was done to heap honour upon
this man ? The peerage is, in England, the first of dig-
nities, the highest of national rewards. You will natu-
rally suppose that Mr. Watt was at least elevated to the
highest rank in the Peerage ! Such a thing was never
even thought of. If truth must be spoken, any honour
which a mere Peerage could confer upon the name
of Watt is utterly contemptible. Yet neglect so dis-
graceful is not, on that account, the less astonishing,
especially in a nation so notoriously jealous of its
great men. When I inquired into the origin of this
neglect, how do you think I was answered ? ' The
dignities you speak of are reserved for officers distin-
guished for military and naval services, for popular ora-
tors in the House of Commons, for members of noble
families. Ce n'est pas la mode—(l do not invent this,
but merely repeat exactly what I was told)—it is not
the fashion to confer dignities of such high character
on mere philosopher-, men of letters, artists, or en-
gineers.' I knew well enough that it was not the cus-
tom in the reign of Queen Anne, for Newton was no
Peer of England. But after a century and a half of
progression in the sciences, in philosophy, when every
one of us has lived to see, in the short term of his own
existence, so many kings dethroned, banished, pro-
scribed, and their places supplied by soldiers of fortune,
without rank or family—after all this, are we not to be al-
lowed to imagine that the partitioning out she human race
into ranks and castes is a thing gone by—instead of being
as rigidly adhered to as a decree of the Pharoahs—
that, whatever be your services, your virtues, your wis-
dom, you are never to be unshackled from the boundaries

of your caste !—that a fashion so contemptible (since
fashion it is) is not now to iis ippear from among the esta-
blished customs of a great people ! Let us hope better
things of the future. A time assuredly must arrive,
when the science of destruction will bow down before
the arts of peace ; when the genius which multiplies our
resources, creates new manufactures, which relieves the
toils of the labouring masses, will occupy in the general
e=timation of men that place which reason and right
feeling henceforth assign to it. Futurity will behold
Watt appe.r before the grand Jury of the inhabitants
of the two 1 e nispheres. They will seo him penetrating
with the aid of his mighty machine, into the bowels of
the
earth, in the short period of a few weeks, to depths
where, before his time, it would have required a cen-
tury of
painful labours to arrive—and there opening up
spacious galleries and mines clearing them in a few
minutes of the immense volumessnatching of water that en-
cumber them, and from virgin earth, the
boundless mineral wealth deposited there by bountiful
nature. Uniting delicacy with power, he will be seen
twisting with equal success the immense folds of the gi-
gantic cable, by which the ship
tohfethe line embraces in
s ifety her anchor in the midst of
waves ; and the microscopic filaments tumultuous-tossing
of the delicate
which
muslins and the aerial lacefloat on the zephyrs
of fashion. A few oscillations of the same machine will
bring into culture extensive swamps andcoun-
tries will be rescued from the periodic and deadly
dll
mias-
mata raised up by the burning heats of a summer u
The great moving forces of machinery, for wit:ieshl!'
it
was necessary to resort to the mountainous regions
of the rapid waterfall, thanks to the discoveryg oflons
Watt, may now be called into existence, without
trqµble-or incumbrance, in the middle of a city, and on
every floor of a house—their power being. suited in in-
tensity to the wish of the mechanician, instead of vary-
ing, like the water or the wind, with the changes of the
weather. The different branches of a manufacture may
thus all become united under the same roof. The pro-
ducts ofindustry, while they become improved in quality,
diminish in price ; and the population, well fed, well
clothed, well warmed, increases with rapidity, is fast
covering with elegant mansions the surface of countries,
formerly the deserts of Europe, and which eternal barren-
ness appeared to condemn to the dominion of beasts of
prey. In a few years, what are now but hamlets will be-
come important cities : in a few years, towns such as Bir-
mingham—where already one reckons three hundred
streets—will rank as the- largest, most beautiful, and