Daily National Intelligencer

STEAM BOATS.
FROM THE PHILADELPHIA UNION.

All the nations are now enjoying the blessings of navigation by steam boats; and it is very uncomfortable to think, that they owe those blessings to the youngest of their brethren. The invention is claimed by the Italians, the French, and English; and Fulton is allowed only the merit of introducing it among the Americans. In vain do we tell the Europeans, that they had no steam boats, until long after they were in use here.—The question with them is,—not who first made a boat, which was driven by steam,—but into the head of what obscure wight the idea first entered, that boats could be thus propelled. Now, the warmest friend of Fulton has never pretended, that he was the first to conceive the design; but only, that he was the first to carry it into execution. Mr. Colden, his admirer and biographer, has taken the pains to enumerate the abortive attempts that had been previously made; nor did he, or any of us, imagine, that the praise of original invention would be denied to him, who, at length, succeeded in doing what so many had tried to do.

The claim of the Italians is founded on an obscure suggestion in some manuscript letters of a Mr. D. Seraphin Seralli du Mont Capi. The French produce the Marquis de Jauffray; who, as they say, made some experiments, at some time, and in some place or other. And it seems, too, that one Desblancs, Horloger to Trecourt, was busy upon a similar contrivance in 1802.—But the people who strive most to rob us of the honor, are our kind brethren, the English; whose custom it is to filch the improvements of other nations; and, having used them a time, pretend that they have been known immemorially. A Mr. Buchanan not long since wrote a book for the express purpose of convincing the world, that it owes the steam boat, as well as all other good things, to the English; and, lest this dose should be insufficient for the credulity of John Bull, the Quarterly Reviewers have taken the occasion of Mr. Colden's book, to traduce the character of Fulton, and bring forward a new pretender. It now appears, that, as early as 1717, the idea of propelling vessels by steam was conceived by one Jonathan Hulls; whose name these redoubted champions of truth and impartiality have printed in capitals, that it may make a lasting impression upon the memories of their readers; and, as the whole of Mr. Gifford's 'spurr-leathers' are perfectly skilled in the art of producing facts from a repetition of falsehood, we may expect to see the claims of JONATHAN HULLS asserted and re-asserted, until, to use one of their own choice expressions, it shall be effectually beat into 'that very honorable block, the British public.'

Now, it is vain for these insolent bigots to assure the world, that the inventor of steam boats was the first man who entertained the notion, that steam might be applied to the purposes of navigation. He may claim the merit of inventing the idea, that the force of vapour would drive a boat as well as turn a mill; but is this to invent the boat,—to devise the machinery, —to put things into practical operation? Some obscure individual may have made attempts fifteen hundred years ago to employ steam as a mechanical power; but was he, therefore, the inventor of the steam engine? Mr. Fulton never claimed to have invented boats, or steam, or steam engines, any more than he claimed to have invented rivers and tides; but he did claim to be the inventor of that combination of powers and mechanism, called the steam boat; and the conclusive answer to all those, who would rob him of this merit, is, that, with all the research of industrious malignity, his enemies can produce no instance, before his time, of any such boat, that could be made to go. Of what possible utility was it, for Jonathan Hulls to publish his lucubrations on this subject in 1717? The question is: Did he make a steam boat? Would it go? The merit is not in thought, but in action;—not in telling the world, that a thing may be done, but in doing it.

Of one thing Mr. Buchanan and the Quarterly Review may be perfectly certain; namely, that, granting the accuracy of their own research, the first actual experiment made with a steam boat, was on the river Delaware, before the city of Philadelphia. They pretend, that a Mr. Millar made some attempts; but when or where, posterity is to learn; and the first trial, of which they can speak with any certainty, is that of Lord Stanhope; who, in 1793, caused a boat to be constructed with paddles, on the principle of a bird's wings; closing as they were brought forward, and opening, when driven back. But this contrivance proved abortive; and, in 1802, a Mr. Symmington tried a boat, upon a different construction, in the frith of Clyde. How it was constructed, we know not; but it is enough to say, that no good ever resulted from the experiment.

Five years before the attempts of Stanhope, and fourteen before those of Symmington, the following postscript of a letter from Dr. Franklin to Dr. Ingenhausz, dated Philadelphia, October 24, 1788, will show, that a boat was actually driven by steam against the tide of the Delaware. 'We have no philosophical news here at present,' says the Doctor, 'except that a boat, moved by a steam engine, rows itself against the tide in our river, and it is apprehended the construction may be so simplified as to become generally useful.'