"In attempting to avoid an infringement of your patent, variations have been made either in the cutting apparatus, or the driving machinery, by which they have been made more complicated and less efficient. Burrall's, which approaches nearest to yours in simplicity and efficiency, is so close a copy that I do not see how the courts could refuse an injunction to prohibit the use of it. The only material difference is the attempt at a side delivery which was tried by you on your first machine, and proved an entire failure. [Sidenote: The Farmers' Debt to Mr. Hussey] "Believing sincerely that the farmers of the U.S. owe you a debt of gratitude, which a regard for themselves should prompt them to pay, and understanding that attempts have been made to question even the priority of your invention, I send you a volume of the _Genesee Farmer_ published in 1834, which will show the opinion entertained at that time by the farmers of that celebrated wheat growing region, both as to the efficiency and priority of your reaper. "Your ob't serv't, "TENCH TILGHMAN." [Sidenote: Conclusive Evidence] As we have already much exceeded the intended limits of the narrative, we might, perhaps, with propriety, here rest the enquiry, having, as we think, satisfactorily shown, and by evidence that cannot be disproved: first, that for a period of nine or ten years after the alleged invention of the reaper by C. H. McCormick in 1831 he did not sell a single machine; nor could he establish by all the evidence adduced before the Board of Extensions, in 1848, that prior to 1840 or 1841 was his reaper in any degree an effective or practical machine; for as he himself states in the letter to Philip Pusey, Esq., M. P., it was not until very material alterations--all essential it may be said--were made, some six or eight years after the date of the patent, could the machine be made to work even tolerably well. Indeed, he states, "I may say they were not of much practical value, until the improvements of my second patent in 1845," being eleven years after the date of the patent, and fourteen years after the alleged invention in 1831. On the other hand we have shown by as good and respectable testimony as can be had in any cause, that from 1833 to 1854, a period of twenty-one years, Hussey's invention was most efficient and satisfactory, _every year_; not by cutting a patch of the fraction of an acre, but by reaping hundreds, nay thousands of acres annually, by the few machines placed in the hands of the farmers from 1833 to 1840.