"During the examination of my case in the Committee-room on the 21st inst. you asked me a question, and accompanied it with a remark to the effect 'Why could I not raise a company in Baltimore with sufficient capital and make as many machines as Howard & Co. and compete with them on equal ground? The excitement of the occasion disqualified me for giving a full reply to your question and remarks. I was at the time so impressed with the injustice and the great hardship of being compelled to compete with the world for what of right belonged to myself exclusively that I had not the words to express my feelings. Could any gentleman look back twenty-one years and see me combating the prejudices of the farmers, and exerting the most intense labor of body and mind, and continuing to do so from year to year, at the very door of poverty, and also look back on those New York parties through the same period, accumulating wealth by the usual course of business, and perhaps watching my progress, and waiting for the proper moment to step in with their money power and grasp the lion's share of the prize which justly belongs to myself. If they could look back on the circumstances and comprehend the case in all its reality and truth I should have no fear of a just decision by the Committee in the House of Representatives. The Government which can tolerate and uphold such a state of things would appear to me to be a hard Government. "The end and design of the Patent Laws was to reward the inventor for a valuable invention by giving him the exclusive right to make and vend the article which he had invented and fourteen years was deemed a sufficient time in which to secure that reward. The telegraph was perfect on its first trial. It required no improvement. On the contrary, half the wire was dispensed with. The Government was at the cost of trying the experiment and has since heaped wealth on the inventor. My fourteen years were required in perfecting my invention without any return for time and labor. (The finishing touch to his cutting apparatus is, no doubt here referred to, and shown in his patent of 1847.) [Sidenote: Mr. Hussey's Protest]