This plan of selling the rights to the states seemed to promise better things for the inventor. In December, 1802, he arranged for the sale of similar rights to the state of North Carolina, and a little later a similar agreement was made with Tennessee. But imagine his dismay when the South Carolina Legislature suddenly annulled its contract with him, refused to make any further payments, and began suit to recover what had already been paid him. The current of popular opinion had again set against this firm of two. It was said that a man in Switzerland had invented a cotton-gin before Whitney, and that the main features of his own machine had been taken from others. But there were some upright and honorable men in the South Carolina Legislature, and they finally succeeded in convincing their associates that Whitney had been maligned. In the session of 1804 the Legislature rescinded its latest act in regard to the gin, and testified to its high opinion of Whitney. The inventor’s faithful partner, Miller, died in 1803. He had stood by Whitney through thick and thin, and had met one buffet after another. In spite of his splendid spirit the ceaseless war to protect their claims had somewhat broken him, and he had despaired of ever receiving justice in the courts. Whitney himself was now receiving some return from the sales to the states, and these enabled him to keep out of debt, but the greater part of his earnings had still to go for the costs of his suits at law. In December, 1807, the United States Court in Georgia gave a decision in Whitney’s favor against a man named Fort who had infringed on his patent. The words of Judge Johnson in this case became celebrated. “To support the originality of the invention,” said he, “the complainants have produced a variety of depositions of witnesses, examined under commission, whose examinations expressly prove the origin, progress, and completion of the machine of Whitney, one of the copartners. Persons who were made privy to his first discovery testify to the several experiments which he made in their presence before he ventured to expose his invention to the scrutiny of the public eye. But it is not necessary to resort to such testimony to maintain this point. The jealousy of the artist to maintain that reputation, which his ingenuity has justly acquired, has urged him to unnecessary pains on this subject. There are circumstances in the knowledge of all mankind which prove the originality of this invention more satisfactorily to the mind than the direct testimony of a host of witnesses. The cotton-plant furnished clothing to mankind before the age of Herodotus. The green seed is a species much more productive than the black, and by nature adapted to a much greater variety of climate, but by reason of the strong adherence of the fibre to the seed, without the aid of some more powerful machine for separating it than any formerly known among us, the cultivation of it would never have been