Part 31 (2/2)
Although my salt-fish friends are probably very familiar with sea-lawyers, the general reader may be astonished to see any allusion to law made by a sea-captain. I therefore beg to inform him, that the following observations on a most interesting point are furnished me by a friend who is legitimately at home in that complicated business, and who devoted much attention to the study of the method by which land is conveyed in the United States with so much ease and so little expense:--
”In America all conveyances of land, whether absolute or by way of mortgage only, are, with the exception of some chattel interests, required to be registered within a fixed or a reasonable time after their execution. Registration is constructive notice to all the world; if not registered, a deed is only valid against the parties to it and the heirs and devisees of the grantor. Generally, however, notice obtained by a purchaser previous to his purchase, will, if clearly proved, prevent his taking the advantage, though he may have been beforehand in registering his own t.i.tle.
”By the old laws of Ma.s.sachusetts, all deeds of conveyance were required to be recorded, 'that neither creditors might be defrauded, nor courts troubled with vexatious suits and endless contentions.' In consequence of the number of registers established in each county--and the excellence of their arrangements, no inconvenience results from the acc.u.mulation of deeds, notwithstanding the early period to which they go back. In register for Suffolk county, Ma.s.sachusetts, are to be seen copies of deeds from 1640 down to the present time. They are bound up in 640 volumes, and do not as yet take up much s.p.a.ce. They have lately multiplied in an increasing ratio, the volumes having risen from 250 to their present number in the last 25 years.
”The register for Philadelphia county, Pennsylvania, contains within a moderate compa.s.s deeds from 1683 downwards. They are referred to by indices on the following plan: All deeds made within a certain time, and in which the name of the grantor commences with the same letter of the alphabet, are bound up in one volume; thus, a volume marked ”H 1820-1847,” contains all deeds executed between those years by grantors whose names begin with H. One index volume contains the names of all grantors between those years in alphabetical order, another that of all grantees, and both refer to volume and page of the books of deeds. A third index gives the names of grantors and grantees, arranged chronologically, according to the year in which the deed they were parties to was executed.
”The original deed remain in the possession of the proprietors, but are of secondary importance. They are written in a plain, legible hand on paper, parchment being seldom used. The signatures of the parties are of course requisite; but the seal, which is essential to a deed in England, is in many States dispensed with. The custom of registering obviates the necessity for those long recitals that so swell out an English conveyance, and the shortest possible forms of covenants are preferred.
The American conveyance only witnesses that the grantor conveys the property therein described, which, or part of which, was conveyed to him by such a one by a deed of such a date, and a marginal note states the volume and page where the deed thus mentioned is to be seen.
”The advantages of registration are,--greater security of t.i.tle, and brevity and economy in conveyances. The example of the United States shows that there is nothing in the Anglo-Saxon laws of real property to render such a system impracticable. Several of the most eminent lawyers in Boston declared, that their registration was found to work easily and safely; the only change desired was by a few, who expressed a wish that more registers should be established, as, one for every district, instead of for every county. They all expressed their astonishment that a similar plan had not long ago been adopted in England. They admitted that dealings with property were more simple in America, where strict settlements are either not allowed, or not generally in use, but maintained that the real obstacles to a registration in this country lie not so much in the difficulty of carrying it out, as in the prejudices of landowners, the self-interest of lawyers, and the superst.i.tious dread entertained by John Bull generally of anything to which he is unaccustomed.”[CH]
I am no lawyer, as I observed before, and therefore I do not pretend to pa.s.s an opinion on the details of the foregoing remarks; but of the results produced by their system, I certainly can speak, for I have seen property transferred without the slightest trouble, and for a few s.h.i.+llings, which, owing to the amount involved, and the complications connected with it, would, if transferred in this country, have kept the firm of Screw, Skinflint, and Stickem hard at work for mouths, and when finished, would have required a week to make up the bill of costs, &c.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote CG: I suppose originated _from the Deity_ is intended.--H.A.M.]
[Footnote CH: Communicated to me by Mr. J.G. Dodson, son of the Right Honourable Sir J. Dodson, Dean of the Arches, &c.]
CHAPTER XXIX.
_Inventions and Inveighings.--Palquam qui meruit ferat._
Writing about law makes one litigious; so I seize this opportunity for making a few observations on American claims. I am not going to open the question of the Bay of Fundy, &c., fisheries; because British liberality has resigned a right, the retention of which was a source of continual irritation to our republican neighbours. I must, however, quote a few lines from the work of their able Chancellor, Kent, to show how fully justified we were in claiming the sovereignty of the Bay of Fundy. If the Chancellor's work on the Law of Nations is consulted, it will be found that he points out to his countrymen their right to the sovereignty of lines stretching ”from Cape Anne to Cape Cod, Nantucket to Montauck Point, thence to the Capes of the Delaware, and _from the South Cape of Florida to the Mississippi.”_ With such wholesale claims a.s.serted on their part, it would require something more than modest a.s.surance to dispute England's right to the Bay of Fundy. But my litigation with the Republic is respecting some of their claims to inventions, which they put forward in so barefaced a manner, that the unwary or the uninquiring--which two sections of the human family const.i.tute the great majority--are constantly misled into a belief of their truth; and the citizens of the Republic would do well to remember, that by putting forward unwarrantable pretensions to some discoveries, they afford just grounds for questioning their lawful claims to others.
The first I shall mention is with reference to Fulton and steam. Mr.
Charles King, the President of Columbia College, in a lecture delivered before the Mechanics' Inst.i.tute, Broadway, New York, in December, 1851, claims for Fulton ”the application of a known force _in a new manner, and to new and before unthought-of purposes_.” Now what are the real facts? James Watt, in 1769, patented the double-acting engine, which was the first step by which the steam-engine was made capable of being used to propel a vessel. In 1780, James Pickard patented what is no other than the present connecting rod and crank, and a fly-wheel, the second and last great improvement in the steam-engine, which enabled it to be of service in propelling vessels.[CI] In 1785, William Symington took out a patent, by which he obtained, with economy of fuel, a more perfect method of condensation of steam and a more perfect vacuum.
In 1787, Mr. Miller, of Dalswinton, a gentleman who had spent a fortune of nearly 30,000l. in s.h.i.+p-building experiments, was urged by Mr.
Taylor to try and apply the power of steam to vessels. William Symington was applied to, with the view of knowing if he could apply his engine to one of Mr. Miller's boats, which he accordingly did, and propelled a little pleasure vessel on the lake at Dalswinton, at the rate of five miles an hour, on the 14th November, 1788. In the following year, Mr.
Symington made a double engine for a boat to be tried upon the Forth and Clyde Ca.n.a.l; and in the month of December, 1789, this trial-vessel was propelled at the rate of six and a half miles an hour. Lord Dundas, who was a large proprietor in the Forth and Clyde Ca.n.a.l, employed Symington to make experiments in 1801. The result of these trials was the construction of the ”Charlotte Dundas,” the first practical steam-boat ever built. The engines of this vessel combined the patents before mentioned of Watt, Pickard, and Symington, which combinations--made by the latter patentee--const.i.tute the present system of steam navigation.
The ”Charlotte Dundas” made her trial trip in March, 1802, and so satisfactory was the trial, that the Duke of Bridgewater ordered eight boats of Symington, for the purpose of running on his ca.n.a.l. The Duke of Bridgewater died immediately after; and the Forth and Clyde proprietors, owing to the injury caused to the banks, discontinued the use of the boat. The foregoing observations prove that if any one individual can claim the merit of inventing the steam-engine, that man is William Symington, who, combining previous inventions with his own patent, constructed the engine as at present in use. At the same time, every credit is due to Mr. Miller, who first afforded Symington the opportunity of putting his ingenuity to the test.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HUDSON RIVER STEAMER.]
Let us now look at Mr. Fulton's part in the transaction. In 1801 he visited Scotland, and was present at one of the experiments making by Symington on the ca.n.a.l, and from him he obtained permission to make full sketches and notes of both boat and apparatus. The fact is sworn to on oath of the presence of an American gentleman, who called himself Mr.
Fulton, during the experiments; and further evidence is found in the fact that the engines he ordered of Messrs. Boulton and Watt for the ”Clermont” were precisely of the same dimensions as those in the ”Charlotte Dundas,” with the exception of two inches more diameter in the piston; and the patent of Fulton dates from 1809--twenty years after Symington had propelled a boat by steam on Lake Dalswinton, and eight years after he had himself taken sketches of Symington's engines in the Forth and Clyde ca.n.a.l-boat.
Beyond the foregoing evidence, there is the testimony of Mr. Bell that, at Fulton's request, he sent him information, plans, &c., of Mr.
Miller's first experiments. The long and the short of the story is clearly this:--Mr. Fulton was a shrewd and clever engineer. He came to England, copied the steam-engine which Symington had combined--one can hardly say invented--and then returned to his own country, and applied it successfully, for which the Republic ought to be thankful to him, and to honour his name; but, for a president of a college lecturing before a mechanics' society, to call Fulton the inventor ”of applying a known force _in a new manner and to new and before unthought-of purposes,”_ exhibits an ignorance or an a.s.surance, for neither of which the slightest excuse can be made.[CJ]
With equal accuracy Mr. King informs the mechanics that ”Colonel John Stevens had clearly worked out in his own mind, long before any locomotive was constructed in Europe, the theory of such an application of steam, and the actual form in which it could be advantageously made, as well as the cost of constructing and working a railway for the use of locomotives.” If this were true, how does it happen that the son of the Colonel, an able and ingenious mechanician, came over to George Stephenson, at Liverpool, to learn what he was doing, and to order engines from him; but Mr. King out-herods Herod, for he claims on behalf of the Colonel, the working of Steam expansively in 1815, for which Watt had taken out a patent thirty-five years before. If presidents of colleges in America cannot in their lectures deal more closely with facts, the instruction given within the walls of the college will come under very unfavourable suspicions.
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