from charging the usual fees, consenting to accept, as full
satisfaction, whatever the Government, after testing the inventions,
should see fit to pay. He never imagined, however, that his laborious
services as engineer were to go unrequited, or that his numerous
inventions and improvements, unconnected with the engine and propeller,
were to be furnished gratuitously. Yet, when, after the Princeton, as
we have seen, had been pronounced on all hands a splendid success,
Ericsson presented his bill to the Navy Department,--not for the
patent-fees in question, but for the bare repayment of his
expenditures, and compensation for his time and labor in the service
of the United States,--he was informed that his claim could not be
allowed; it could not be recognized as a "legal claim." It was not
denied that the services alleged had been rendered,--that the work for
which compensation was asked had been done by Ericsson, and well
done,--nor that the United States were in the enjoyment of the unpaid
results of his labor and invention. A claim based upon such
considerations might, it would seem, have been brought within the
definition of a legal claim. But if not admissible under the strict
rules of the Navy Department, it was certainly an equitable demand
against the United States; and Ericsson could not believe that the
representatives of the great American people would stand upon
technicalities. He accordingly made a direct appeal to them in a
Memorial to Congress.

We may as well here give the further history of this claim. It met with
the usual delays and obstructions that private claims, having nothing
but their intrinsic merits to support them, are compelled to
encounter. It called forth the usual amount of legislative
pettifogging. Session after session passed away, and still it hung
between the two Houses of Congress, until the very time which had