During the agonizing period of waiting for an answer to his personal letter to Bonaparte, from which he had the right to expect some acknowledgment at least in view of the high standing of his introducers, Fulton still hoped. But when he heard that Bonaparte had characterized him as a swindler, he knew that all was ended, and that the door to further progress in France had been shut and finally barred. This was something much more to Fulton than a mere refusal of an inventor’s offer of an incomplete device. Such a refusal he could have endured with courage and some equanimity. He had gone through similar painful experiences with his canal schemes and his various excavating machines. Now he had to suffer that disappointment and in addition the still harder blow of having his altruistic offer of service and his views on political philosophy rejected with slanderous contempt to which he was powerless to reply. His writings show that his heart was as much set on his conception of liberty and freedom as on his mechanical contrivances. After his defeat, one that Fulton recognized as final so far as France was concerned, he laid aside permanently his long cherished plans for constructing small canals, and temporarily his consideration of submarine warfare, to devote his attention to the development of a boat propelled by a steam engine. His only subsequent move to promote a system of canals coupled with his scheme to overcome differences in elevations by inclined planes was in a letter to Albert Gallatin, dated Washington, Dec. 8, 1807. Gallatin was then Secretary of the Treasury of the United States and was about to issue in pursuance of a resolution of the Senate a report upon “Public Roads and Canals.” Fulton in his long letter, that Gallatin made a part of his report, urged the construction of canals in preference to highways. Engrossed, however, in his steamboat to which, following the rejection of the Nautilus, he had thrown his impetuous energy, Fulton made no effort personally to carry his canal plans into execution either in France or the United States.