His emotions on sailing from England were of a distinctly different character from those he felt when leaving France. In the latter country he had been rejected with contumely, the first real shock that he had experienced. He departed from France sore and angry, as has been shown. In England he had been treated quite otherwise. Throughout his stay of twenty-eight months he had been shown every courtesy. He had the entrée to government offices and enjoyed the confidence of the highest officials, including Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville, in turn prime ministers. The disagreement with the British Government was on financial grounds. During his period of work he had received a generous salary in addition to reimbursement for all his expenses. Development of events made Fulton no longer necessary to the Government on the one hand, while on the other his steamboat arrangement with Chancellor Livingston was forcing Fulton’s return to America. Both parties were ready to end the contractual relation. The British Government, not having received any direct benefit from Fulton’s ideas, except the indirect one that he had been kept from going over to the enemy, naturally sought a means of terminating the contract without further payment. Fulton, equally naturally, sought substantial pecuniary reward. He was past the age when men have usually made their mark, and had accomplished nothing. His steamboat plans were as yet on paper with nothing more definite than hope. He was in debt to his “two friends in America,” a debt that he could repay by no other means in sight than through his submarine contract. He, therefore, made the best fight he could, single-handed, to obtain a favorable settlement. It is interesting to follow the working of Fulton’s mind in these final negotiations for a satisfactory adjustment, as shown by his own letters. In his original contract of May, 1804, he made no reservation, but placed his ideas wholly and exclusively at the disposition of the British Government. It does not appear that he gave any thought to the use of his device by the United States. This is not remarkable. He had left America when he was but twenty-one years old. At that time there was no constitution, no federal government, nothing but a confederacy of colonies disturbed by strong jealousies of each other. He had lived abroad for twenty years, including the formative period of a man’s character. His sole tie with his native country, his mother, had been cut by her death. The Barlows were quite as much French as American. There was nothing except the friendship and personality of Livingston to rouse in him a sense of patriotism, or lead him to feel the existence of a national spirit in a united country in America.