The Bill was introduced to Parliament on the 28th of February, 1775, and it was obvious from the first that it would have considerable opposition to encounter. The mining interest had looked forward to Watt’s invention as a means of helping them out of their difficulties and giving a new value to their property by clearing the drowned mines of water. They therefore desired to have the free use of the engine at the earliest possible period; and when it was proposed to extend the patent by Act of Parliament, they set up with one accord the cry of “No monopoly.” Up to the present time, as we have seen, the invention had been productive to Watt of nothing but loss, labour, anxiety, and headaches; and it was only just that a reasonable period should be allowed to enable him to derive some advantage from the results of his application and ingenuity. But the mining interest took a different view of the matter. They did not see the necessity of recognising the rights of the inventor beyond the term of his existing patent, and they held that the public interests would suffer if the proposed “monopoly” were granted. Nor were they without supporters in Parliament, for among the most strenuous we find the name of Edmund Burke,--influenced, it is supposed, by certain mining interests in the neighbourhood of Bristol, which city he then represented.
There is no doubt that the public would have benefited by Watt’s invention having been made free to all. But it was not for the public merely that Watt had been working at his engine for fifteen long years. He was a man of comparatively small means, and had been buoyed up and stimulated to renewed exertion during that time by the hope of ultimate reward in the event of its success. If labour could give a man a title to property in his invention, Watt’s claim was clear. The condensing-engine had been the product of his own skill, contrivance, and brain-work. But there has always been a difficulty in getting the claims of mere brain-work recognised. Had he expended his labour in building a house instead of in contriving a machine, his right of property would at once have been acknowledged. As it was, he had to contend for justice and persuade the legislature of the reasonableness of granting his application for an extension of the patent. In the “Case” which he drew up for distribution amongst the members of the Lower House, on the motion being carried for the recommittal of the Bill, he set forth that having, after great labour and expense extending over many years, succeeded in completing working engines of each of the two kinds he had invented, he found that they could not be carried into profitable execution without the further expenditure of large sums of money in erecting mills, and purchasing the various materials and utensils necessary for making them; and from the reluctance with which the public generally adopt new inventions, he was afraid that the whole term granted by his patent would expire before the engines should have come into general use and any portion of his expenses be repaid:--