Nothing can better mark than this collective act of reward the sentiment of public gratitude which your invention has so justly excited.
The Emperor has already given you a testimonial of his high esteem when he conferred upon you, more than a year ago, the decoration of a Chevalier of his order of the Legion of Honor.

You will find a new mark of it in the initiative which his Majesty wished that his government should take in this conjuncture; and the decision that I charge myself to bring to your knowledge is a brilliant proof of the eager and sympathetic adhesion that his proposition has met with from the States I have just enumerated.
I pray you to accept on this occasion, sir, my personal congratulations, as well as the assurance of my sentiments of the most distinguished consideration.
While this letter is dated September 1, the amount of the gratuity agreed upon seems to have been made known soon after the first meeting of the convention, for on April 29, the following letter was written to Morse by M.van den Broek, his agent in all the preliminaries leading up to the convention, and who, by the way, was to receive as his commission one third of the amount of the award, whatever it might be: "I have this morning seen the secretary of the Minister, and from him learned that the sum definitely fixed is 400,000 francs, payable in four years.

This does not by any means answer our expectations, and I am afraid you will be much disappointed, yet I used every exertion in my power, but without avail, to procure a grant of a larger sum." It certainly was a pitiful return for the millions of dollars which Morse's invention had saved or earned for those nations which used it as a government monopoly, and while I find no note of complaint in his own letters, his friends were more outspoken.

Mr.Kendall, in a letter of May 18, exclaims: "I know not how to express my contempt of the meanness of the European Governments in the award they propose to make you as _the_ inventor of the Telegraph.

I had set the sum at half a million dollars as the least that they could feel to be at all compatible with their dignity.