300 The Rights of the Thinker. [July, 
The same reasoning applies to ourselves ; it is by increasing 
the protection of the inventor that we shall gain more in- 
vention. We know well that many of the best men refuse 
to carry out ideas because of the expense, which patents 
will not enable them to recover, because the laws have been 
a confusion and the administration in the hands of men who 
do not pretend to a knowledge either of science or the 
industrial arts. 
It has been a principle, on which the patent law is founded, 
that the good of the commonwealth is the aim. This is fair 
enough, so far, but we know what injustice was often done 
under the promising phrase, so powerful in Rome as to 
make the people blind to the misfortunes it entailed. If the 
individual must suffer for the commonwealth, it is only be- 
cause the commonwealth is the protection of the individual, 
and if it is not he has no interest in suffering for it. We 
may say, therefore, that the rights of the literary and in- 
venting class are such as the State must protect, as it protects 
the property in land or potatoes; and if it should not do so 
it can only be when reduced to a condition of such barbarism 
as can imagine no property that cannot be measured with a 
chain or weighed in sacks. In some nations a man might 
be said to live for the State; in newer times the State is 
seen, more and more, to be subservient to the individuals, 
and as new worlds are evolved from the old they must have 
their position recognised in proportion as they show their 
value. These new worlds cannot be formed of the same 
material as this old one, but they are no less admired, and if 
there is a certain endurance in the matter of this old world 
which seems destined to give it force as well as respectability, 
still its highest value is only as a foundation for the growth 
of the, apparently more transient, gifts of the mind. 
Another point conne¢ted with patents is not to be 
neglected. It is said that they must only be given in the 
name of the inventor. This produces much evil, and causes 
some men to say that they are inventors when they are not. 
There is no harm whatever in giving patents in the name of 
anyone who may say that he is commissioned by the in- 
ventor, with whom there may be an agreement. This has 
been done, and is done, with foreigners, and no good objection 
has arisen. We have surely a right to this privilege as 
much as foreigners have. ‘The advantage is, that men may 
give the benefit of their inventions without being dragged 
before the world or tormented in law courts, when by consti- 
tution they are unable to bear the annoyances. We know 
the want of such a permission to be a loss to the world of 
