The various circumstances conjoining to bring about this important event, are deserving our attention.1st.The urgent demand for some powerful agent, however rude and unwieldly in action.Had the operation to be performed, been in any degree complicated and nice in its nature, it would never probably have occurred to any one, that the expanse and collapse of a vapor, shut up in iron vessels, could be brought to execute it.2d.The materials, metal, coal, and water, being in these situations abundant.3d.The previous improvement of machinery in general.4th.The want occurring to men of property, and of a class in general bold in enterprise, and accustomed to stake their funds Freely.Had any of these been wanting, this extraordinary invention might yet have slumbered, veiled in the darkness which had covered it for so many thousands of years.Perhaps it might have been stifled at its birth, for its first appearance gave but slight token of its inherent capabilities.The expenditure of fiml amt of labor, necessary to the discharge of its functions, was excessive.It having, however, been thus established, that it was an agent, within the compass of man's ability, to make a partner in the series of his operations, there was a strong stimulus to endeavour to render it a more economical agent.This was effected by a change in the construction of the apparatus, the leading feature of which, is, the causing the steam to perform its operations, through the intervention of a piston.The instrument thus produced, was an effective and economical operator in the purpose designed.The improvement was important in itself, and far more so in its consequences.Had the machinery of simple pipes and valves been continued, under some improved form, (74) it might have appeared only fitted for propelling fluids, and been confined to that purpose, as through the aid of sails of some sort, wind has been made to propel vessels, from very early ages, though it is only of comparatively recent times, that it has been applied to give motion to mills.But, the introduction of the piston, and its adjuncts, showed the power in a familiar form; the handle of a pump was a thing well known as put in motion by machinery, and it was obvious that the movement had only to be reversed, to communicate motion to any machinery.Under this form, therefore, its progress as a power through all other machinery, may be said to have been inevitable.
It possessed the important advantages of being always at command, uniform in action, and unbounded in force.In this progress it was assisted in one important step by science.The discovery of the doctrine of latent heat enabled it at once to surmount a great obstacle, which might otherwise have long limited the extent of its operations.It is perhaps not to he supposed, but that the general truth would have been itself at last made known by the continual groping after improvement, which the existence of such an instrument in the hands of men would of itself have occasioned;if however science advanced it by only a few years, the beneficial effects of such an anticipation, will be allowed to have been very great.(75)In its course, two things seem specially worthy of notice, the additional freedom which it gave the inventive faculty, and the circumstances which existed to facilitate the progress of that faculty, and which it seized on for the purpose.The consciousness of the possession of an agent, of unlimited and perfectly manageable power, which had escaped the attention of all preceding ages, seemed to have immediately more effectually broken the constraining and retarding influence of the propensity to imitation, than any preceding event.Whatever mere motion could do, if the sphere of its action could be contracted into small space, was conceived within the power of steam, and invention set to work with a determination progressively to supply the means of its application.In these essays, it has been always ultimately successful.It is not necessary here to enlarge on the great changes it has hence effected, or on the important improvements it has introduced.It is to be observed, however, that, whatever it has performed, has proceeded in the order we have indicated, and which, I believe, almost all inventions have followed.The diversity of climates, territories, productions, and other circumstances of different regions and nations, has helped it, as them, forward, and been to it as it were steps, by which it has gained the rank it holds in the modes of human industry.
Thus the peculiar circumstances of the North American continent, may, with propriety, be said to have been the exciting cause producing steam navigation, one of the most important of these steps.That country is full of great lakes and rivers, affording the easiest, and often the only means for the transport of the larger quantities of agricultural produce, that its interior sections yield.Such inland navigation is always exceedingly tedious; there were therefore peculiar reasons for the devise of some new agent to facilitate it.An agent like steam too, might evidently be employed with more safety and chance of success, in calm inland waters, than in the great ocean.If we consider, in addition to this, the greater play which, from circumstances already enumerated, the inventive faculty enjoys in that continent, we shall see that it was there, so to say, that this improvement ought to have taken place.The point, too, in North America, where it did first actually take place, is also, as it were, particularly marked out for it.The transport between New York and Albany, by sailing vessels on the Hudson river, was both very expensive, and peculiarly tedious.
