This notice appeared on 2nd July, two weeks after the notice calling the meeting just referred to, and the connection between the two notices seems fairly clear. It is a reasonable assumption that the “special affairs” discussed at the meeting were the question of purchasing the machine of Highs, which may well have been, as Guest suggests, an extension of the principle of the jenny then in use, for there can be little doubt that the jenny was widely in use at this time.[305] Evidently something was known of it before Hargreaves left Lancashire, and if it is true that he had also mounted and sold some jennies, it is probable that by 1770 it was well known, and that it was included among the “machines and engines made and used about the town of Manchester” mentioned in the notice calling the meeting shortly after he obtained his patent. If such was the case, the opposition to the patent and Hargreaves’ failure to uphold it can be easily understood. [Footnote 305: According to Ogden, who, it will be remembered, published his _Description of Manchester_ in 1783, the aim of Highs’ machine was to produce a yarn suitable for warps. After referring to the introduction of the jenny and the risings against it, which called forth an address from Dorning Rasbotham, a magistrate who lived near Bolton, in which he urged that it would be to the interest of the workpeople to encourage jennies, Ogden proceeds: “This seasonable address produced a general acquiescence in the use of these engines, to a certain number of spindles, but they were soon multiplied to three or four times the quantity; nor did the invention of ingenious mechanics rest here, for the demand for twist for warps was greater as weft grew plenty, therefore engines were soon constructed for this purpose: one in particular was purchased at a price which was a considerable reward for the contriver’s ingenuity, and exposed at the Exchange, where he spun on it, and all that were disposed to see the operation were admitted gratis” (pp. 90-91).] But, as already mentioned, Guest claims that the original machine was not the invention of Hargreaves, but the invention of Thomas Highs, and that Hargreaves’ relation to it was that he added a considerable improvement. The evidence put forward by Guest on behalf of Highs rests mainly on statements made by old men sixty years after the event, and considerable suspicion of such evidence is excusable particularly when it has been elicited by an ardent man out to establish a case.[306] Moreover, it is a remarkable fact that no one--not even Highs himself--appears openly to have put forward the claim until Guest published his first book in 1823, although the controversy over Arkwright’s patents, in which Highs figured so prominently, afforded many opportunities. [Footnote 306: Guest, _History of the Cotton Manufacture_, pp. 13-14, 53-54. also _British Cotton Manufacture_.]