Note 273 — Chapter XVII · Commercial Politics—The Albion Mills—Riots in Cornwall—Prosperity of Boulton and Watt.

Writing to M. De Luc, the Queen’s Librarian, of what he and his partner had done for Cornwall, Boulton said,—“The copper and tin mines of Cornwall are now sunk to so great a depth that had not Mr. Watt and myself nearly expended our fortunes and hazarded our ruin by neglecting our regular business, and by a long series of expensive experiments in bringing our engine to its present degree of perfection, those mines must inevitably have stopped working, and Cornwall at this time would not have existed as a mining county. The very article of extra coals for common engines would have amounted to more than the entire profits of their working.”—Boulton to De Luc, 31st March, 1787.