298 The Rights of the Thinker. [July, 
to others. We may throw aside all such fancies; for sup- 
posing the glass story to be true, which it almost certainly 
is not, how many millions of fires had been made in similar 
circumstances before, without finding an eye to see; and 
supposing the apple story to be true, as giving a momentary 
impulse to the thoughtful soul of Newton, how many mil- 
lions had before seen the selfsame result of falling to the 
ground, as a charaCteristic of matter around us. To reara 
germ seen in any natural or artificial act up to the fulness 
of life and usefulness is the work of invention or discovery, 
as the case may be, and the man who does so creates out 
of that which was as nothing to the world a property which 
his fellows value, at times, to an extent which is incalculably 
great. If a man takes unoccupied territory, producing 
nothing to his countrymen, and renders it productive, the 
trifle that he pays for it in any colony is as nothing to that 
which labour makes it, and no man thinks of denying his 
rights when he has made a rich estate. He has used the 
knowledge of Nature, and has made a permanent property 
for himself and his posterity. If another finds—as in this 
country—all the land occupied, and seeks, out of other de- 
partments of Nature, to bring results valuable to himself 
and others, he uses frequently much more labour, much 
rarer knowledge, more varied talents, and with difficulty he 
obtains a right to his property for a few years only, and 
then every one seizes it and uses it for himself. Why 
should a property which a man creates be allowed in his 
possession for a shorter time than if he finds it? ‘There is 
one reason, and only one good one, that we know of. If the 
world of mind had been valued according to its usefulness 
it would have accumulated to an extent that it would be a 
burden to the living, and the very progress made would 
become aclog on its own continuance. This is a reason 
why the rights should not descend to posterity, but it is not 
a reason why they should not exist during a considerable 
part of a man’s lifetime, or a certain time after death should 
he die early. Let a man make an invention every year for 
thirty years, and let each invention be worth an acre of 
land,—at the end of the fourteenth year the value of an 
acre is taken from him, and every year afterwards the same 
amount is taken away for thirty years, until at last nothing 
is left. ‘This is the way inventors are treated, whilst pecu- 
liar laws are made to retain the property of land in the 
same family for generations. It is even proposed to take 
inventors’ property away every seven years, as the thriving 
Jews and other wealthy persons—in times gone past—were 
