The Machine for Spining cotton so well known by the name of the Hall-oth-wood wheele, to which name succeded that of the Mule, is well known in this country to be my Invention, to complet which to my satisfaction cost me years of study and personall labour, and at the expence of every Shilling I had in the world, unaided by any one and unknown to all. At first I only spun on it occasionally (being a weaver), but I had not used it constantly more than Six Months before I was beset on every side by people of various descriptions from the distance of 60 Miles and upwards as well as my neighbours. So that in a few Months I saw that certain ruin was before me if I continued to work it, there were so many persons desirous to see the Machine. To prevent them I could not keep to my work, whose Curiosoty was excited by the superior quality and fineness of the yarn I spun hitherto unknown and which at that time the trade was much in want of. To destroy what had cost me so much labour and expence I could not think of, what to do I knew not. The principall men then in the trade made proposals to me that if I would let the machine be shown to the public they would make a liberall Subscription to which I assented in preference to destroying it, and received by subscription only so much as built me a new one with 4 Spindles more than my first, as the book of subscription which I have by me will prove. At that time 1780 the cotton trade was in its infancy, and I dare affirm that its rapid Increase was owing under Divine Providence to this Invention. If I had destroyed, rather than give it up I do not hessitate to say this country would have lost that piece of Mechanism that has produced and increased one of the first Manufactories in Europe viz. the fine Muslin and cambric, and also the extention of many Sorts of cotton goods that were made in an inferior manner before, all of which would now have been lost to us without this Machine. In the year 1802 and 3 a number of liberall minded gentlemen at Manchester proposed for my aprobation to begin a subscription which was meant to extend not only to England but to Scotland and Ireland but the war breaking out at the time it was just begun at Manchester and its vicinity, and the difficulties consequent thereon prevented its progress and thitherto it has been dropt the promoters of which sent me what had been received viz betwixt 3 and 400 pounds it being part of what had been subscribed and for whose unsolicited generosity I shall ever feel thankfull, which sum I was requested to accept not [as] a remuneration but as an acknowledgment of the validity of my claim to the invention, So that I have yet to receive that recompence I have many thousand times been told within the last 30 years was my due. I am now geting into years and if ever I am to receive any compensation it cannot be much longer deferred.