250 THE WEDGWOODS. 



Staffordshire, were famous for making milk pans and butter pots, 

 and, by a succession of improvements, the manufactory in that 

 neighbourhood has gradually increased in the variety, the quality, 

 and the quantity of its productions, so as to furnish, beside the 

 home consumption, an annual export of useful and ornamental 

 wares, nearly to the amount of two hundred thousand pounds ; but 

 during all this progress, it has had the free range of the country for 

 materials to work upon, to the great advantage of many landowners 

 and of navigation. 



" Queen's ware has already several of the properties of porcelain, 

 but is yet capable of receiving many essential improvements. The 

 public have for some time required and expected them. Innume- 

 rable experiments have been made for this purpose. There are 

 immense quantities of materials in the kingdom that would answer 

 this end; but they are locked up by a monopoly in the bowels 

 of the earth, useless to the landowners, useless to the manufacturers, 

 useless to the public ; and one person is petitioning the legislature, 

 in effect, to stop all the improvements in earthenware and porcelain 

 in this kingdom but his own. 



" For the next step, and the only step the manufacturers can 

 take to improve their wares, will be deemed an invasion of this 

 vague and incomprehensible patent. 



"The manufacturers of earthenware are justly alarmed at the 

 prospect of extending the term of the patent, because, without 

 improvements, the sale of their manufactures must certainly decline 

 in favour of foreign manufacturers, who may not be deprived of the 

 free use of the materials their countries produce ; for the consideration 

 in this case is not whether one manufacturer or manufactory shall 

 be supported against another, but whether the earthenware and 

 porcelain manufactories of Great Britain shall be supported, in their 

 improvements, against those of every other country in the world. 

 Upon the whole, the petitioners against the Bill humbly presume 

 this monopoly will appear to be contrary to good policy, highly 

 injurious to the public, and generally inconvenient ; that the extension 

 of the monopoly, supposing any patent to be valid, would be greater 

 increasing the injury; that the bill now depending is not only calcu- 

 lated to extend, but to confirm it, arid therefore they humbly hope 

 it will not be suffered to pass into a law." 



Despite all this opposition to his petition by Wedgwood, 

 as the representative of the potters, and by the members of 

 parliament for the county of Stafford, and others who had 



