a Public Institution. 745 



In making this observation, I would by no means be 

 understood to call in question the wisdom of granting 

 patents for securing certain privileges and advantages 

 to the authors of new and useful inventions^ So far 

 from thinking this system of rewarding ingenuity 

 disadvantageous to society, I am convinced that the 

 present flourishing state of our manufactures, and con- 

 sequently of our commerce, has been in a great meas- 

 ure owing to its operation. 



I am only desirous that science and art should once 

 be brought cordially to embrace each other, and to 

 direct their united efforts to the improvement of agri- 

 culture, manufactures, and commerce, and to the in- 

 crease of domestic comfort. 



That the proposed Institution would facilitate and 

 consolidate that union is too obvious to require any 

 particular proof or illustration. 



I shall mention only one circumstance more that 

 may be assigned as a cause for the slowness of the 

 progress of new and useful improvements ; and that is 

 the erroneous opinion that is but too generally enter- 

 tained with regard to the real importance of what are 

 called improvements, or their tendency to promote the 

 happiness and prosperity of mankind. It is imagined 

 by some that though a new invention may have some 

 degree of utility, yet as our forefathers, who were not 

 acquainted with it, contrived to do very well without it, 

 so it cannot be a matter of any very great importance 

 to us or to our posterity whether it be brought forward 

 into general use or not. But those who reason in this 



o 



manner should be requested to recollect that all the 

 successive improvements in the condition of man, from 

 a state of ignorance and barbarism to that of the high- 



