o my chagrin, the Attorney-General
remarked that he had not had time to examine the letter. He carelessly
took it up and turned over the leaves without reading it, and then asked
me if I had not taken measures for a patent in my own country. And, upon
my reply in the affirmative, he remarked that: 'America was a large
country and I ought to be satisfied with a patent there.' I replied that,
with all due deference, I did not consider that as a point submitted for
the Attorney-General's decision; that the question submitted was whether
there was any legal obstacle in the way of my obtaining letters patent
for my Telegraph in England. He observed that he considered my invention
as having been _published_, and that he must _therefore_ forbid me to
proceed.

"Thus forbidden to proceed by an authority from which there was no
appeal, as I afterward learned, but to Parliament, and this at great cost
of time and money, I immediately left England for France, where I found
no difficulty in securing a patent. My invention there not only attracted
the regards of the distinguished savants of Paris, but, in a marked
degree, the admiration of many of the English nobility and gentry at that
time in the French capital. To several of these, while explaining the
operation of my telegraphic system, I related the history of my treatment
by the English Attorney-General. The celebrated Earl of Elgin took a deep
interest in the matter and was intent on my obtaining a special Act of
Parliament to secure to me my just rights as the inventor of the
Electro-Magnetic Telegraph. He repeatedly visited me, bringing with him
many of his distinguished friends, and on one occasion the noble Earl of
Lincoln, since one of Her Majesty's Privy Council. The Honorable Henry
Drummond also interested himself for me, and through his kindness and
Lord Elgin's I received letters of introduction to Lord Brougham and to
the Marquis of Northampton, the President of the Royal Society, and
several other distinguished persons in England. The Earl of Lincoln
showed me special kindness. In taking leave of me in Paris he gave me his
card, and, requesting me to bring my telegraphic instruments with me to
London, pressed me to give him the earliest notice of my arrival in
London.

"I must here say that for weeks in Paris I had been engaged in
negotiation with the Russian Counselor of State, the Baron Alexander de
Meyendorff, arranging measures for putting the telegraph in ope