a Public Institution. 745 



In making this obsei*vation, 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 

 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- 



