Page:Report from the Select Committee on Steam Carriages.pdf/96



John Farey, Esq. 10 August, 1831. them; and what is the best mode of management also by building new and better Carriages as soon as they have learned what will be better than the present ones. But all this must be at a great pecuniary loss, and some further encouragement must be held out in order to induce the more skilful mechanicians to embark in such a pursuit; for at present it is by no means an object of attention to our best and most competent engineers, because they know they would only throw away their money and time by undertaking Steam Coaches, even if they were to succeed ever so completely. The Patentees are a different class of men; they are the inventors, who have first organized and arranged the combination of machinery which is to be used; and, according to law, they have acquired a legal property in those peculiar combinations which they have discovered, that has been their encouragement and stimulus to exertion; but the terms of their patent rights will be very likely to expire before their inventions come into use to such an extent as will repay them their previous costs with any profit thereon; and also, with the present defective state of the law on the subject of patents, they will be unusually lucky if they are able to make good their patents at law, in case their rights are contested. The Patentees are not experienced mechanicians or engineers, and have had to learn the business of engine-making and of coach-making as they went on; and a great deal of the deficiency of the present Steam Coaches has arisen from the circumstance, that they have been made by persons who were not at that time qualified to execute either a common coach or a common Steam Engine; but they have acquired more skill now, and we may expect more finished productions from them in future. There is no mechanician, of the class of those who will be ultimately employed to make the engines and machinery of Steam Coaches when they do come into use (and who alone can give that perfection of design, proportion and execution, which is essential to their coming into use), who will have any thing to do with them now; not so much from any doubts that they