1875.| Notices of Books. 533 
the timeworn cavil that it leads to fatalism—a curious charge 
when brought, as it often was, by the followers of Calvin! It 
must be remembered that the plea of necessity is felt to be no 
longer any bar to the punishment of criminals. Whether a 
given man can “help” committing a murder or not, still, if he 
has been guilty of such a deed, society is in self-defence justi- 
fied in his elimination. 
A Digest of the Reported Cases Relating to the Law and Practice 
of Letters Patent for Inventions, Decided from the Passing 
of the Statute of Monopolies to the Present Time. By 
CLEMENT Hieains, M.A., F.C.S., Barrister-at-Law. Lon- 
don: Butterworths. 
TueE rights of inventors, the nature and even the very existence 
of patent-laws, are at present under examination and may be 
said to be trembling in the balance. A number of persons, noisy 
if not numerous, and strong in influence if not in argument, con- 
tend that patents are a hindrance instead of a benefit to 
manufactures, and deny the exclusive claim of the inventor to 
the beneficial use of his own ideas. That a view so essentially 
communistic should for one moment be tolerated in property- 
loving England may seem at first sight singular. But it is in 
reality the outcome of a principle but too common. Your 
sans cullotte communist, who has nothing in his purse, denounces 
property as robbery, and clamours for the confiscation of landed 
estates. Your capitalist, who has nothing in his head, denounces 
property in ideas, and seeks to confiscate all inventions for the 
good of the public, by which he means himself. 
There are, moreover, two words commonly used in conneé¢tion 
with patents which act upon the ‘‘rump” of the Manchester 
school in the same manner asa red cloth does upon a bull. We 
speak of obtaining protection for an invention, and we refer in 
treating of patents to the statute of Monopolies. These two un- 
fortunate terms do the mischief. They are used, to be sure, in 
a sense quite different from what they bore in the great anti-corn- 
law agitation. But a free-trader when once he suspects economic 
heresy overlooks such distinctions. It is, of course, incontro- 
vertible that if any kind of property should be sacred and 
inviolable, property in inventions should have precedence. The 
inventor may justly ask the memorable question ‘‘ May not I do 
what I will with my own?” for hehas created it. If amanmay 
use our inventions against our will, and without recompense, a 
fortiori heis entitled to appropriate our money, even our personal 
labour, for his own purposes. If the anti-patent law agitators 
can show us any better way in which the interests of the inven- 
tor may be secured and recognised, we shall be well content. If 
not, we must protest against their views, and against the Bill for 
the ‘‘Amendment” of the Patent Laws now under the consider- 
sation of Parliament. 
