The telegraph manual: a complete history and description of the semaphoric, electric and magnetic telegraphs of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, ancient and modern.

818 APPENDIX.
With this unsuccessful result upon them in London, Mr. Smith next
accompanied Professor Morse to Paris (July 1838), where an original,
and subsequently an additional patent was obtained. But the French
government, jealous of this mystical agency, subsequently interposed a
prohibition to the establishment of it under the patents, so that they expired before made available to the proprietors. As an act of justice,
the government of France has recently interposed to raise, conjunctively
with some other of the continental governments in use of the syster,, a
donation of $S0,000 in acknowledgment of the great merits and utility
of the Morse system over all others-a tardy, but merited compliment.
While in Paris, as early as October, 1838, Mr. Smith brought out an
article in the Observer, published by Galignani, containing thefirst idea
ever announced of the uses that were destined to be made of the telegraph
for astronomical purposes. Even Professor Morse did not then fully comprehend this important element of its ultimate utility. In, fact none at
that early day appeared to measure the immense scope which the invention had in the future uses of the world with the same clearness as did
Mr. Smith. His early report to Congress and his contemporaneous writings
attest fully this fact. Mr. Smith embarked at Liverpool for the United
States, in November, 1838, in the illy-provided steamer Liverpool-the
newest of the ocean steamers put into service by the first ocean steam
company. An almost unprecedented storm set in on the same night, which
continued without intermission until the morning of the sixth day, when the
ship had become so disabled, having been swept fore and aft by the sea
of everything on deck, including most of her boats, and been in the most
perilous condition for many hours, was then put about and run with the
storm into Ireland, where she arrived on the morning of the 9th day
from Liverpool. The passengers were landed at Cork. and Mr. Smith
with most of them returned to Liverpool and re-embarked in one of the
regular line sailing packets for New-York. where he arrived the latter
part of December, too late to resume his position as Chairman of the
Committee on Commerce in the House. Mr. Morse, remained in the
meantime and until the following spring in Paris to foster the interests
of the infant telegraph, with alternate hope and despair of success.
Flattering expressions in the fulness of French coquetry were showered
upon its, to the multitude, inscrutable performances, but nothing more
substantial resulted to the proprietors.
The session of 1838-'39 of Congress terminated without reaching the
Telegraph Bill on the calendar for action; and Mr. Smith's acquired
interest in the enterprise forbid his moving the subject out of its order.
His split, moreover, from the dominant administrative party on the Subtreasury Bill, deprived him of his accustomed influence with the majority
party on any measure, and he preferred biding his time out of Congress
with the Telegraph, to any injudicious crowding of it in Congress against
well-measured probabilities.
He retired from Congress at the close of the session; and in the following year entered with heroic zeal upon the determined purpose of
overthrowing the power of the Van Buren Administration in Maine, and
wherever else it might be favorable. It was in appearance not only a
Herculean but a forlorn task, in a State so thoroughly drilled and solidified under party organization as Maine then was. But Mr. Smith had
been part and parcel of that organization too long-had aided too largely
from its inception, to give it consistency and strength-not to understand
all its elements and workings, and ins and outs to popular feeling, to be
wasting power in blind assaults upon battlements which he knew had
become hollow, enfeebled, and destructible at certain points; and it was
at these he made and led on the rush of the opposition forces. Federal