Note 198 — Chapter XIV · Financial Difficulties—Boulton in Cornwall—Attack and Defence of the Engine Patent.

In another letter Watt described himself as “worried by the Wheal Chanceians.... In short,” says he, “I am at this moment so provoked at the undeserved rancour with which we are persecuted in Cornwall, that, were it not on account of the deplorable state of debt I find myself in, I would live on bread and cheese, and suffer the water to run out at their adits, before I would relax the slightest iota of what I thought my right in their favour.”—Watt to Boulton, 17th October, 1780. Boulton MSS.