TRANSACTION'S 01' THE SECTIONS. 201 



Closely allied to the question of education is that of the system of Letters Pa- 

 tent. A patent is, accordiii<>- to modern views, a contract bet\yeen the common- 

 wealth and an individual who has discovered a method peculiar to himself of accom- 

 plishing' a result of n-eneral utility. The State, beini;- interested to secure the in- 

 formation and to induce the inventor to put his discovery into execution, grants 

 him the exclusive right of practising it, or of authorizing others to do so, for a 

 limited number of years, in consideration of his making a full and sufficient de- 

 scription of the same. Unfortunately this simple and equitable theory of the patent 

 system is very imperfectly carried out, and is beset with various objectionable prac- 

 tices, which render a patent sometimes an impediment to, rather than a furtherance 

 of, applied science, and sometimes involve tlie author of an invention in endless 

 legal contentions and disaster, instead of procuring for him the intended reward. 

 These evils are so great and palpable that many persons, including men of un- 

 doubted sincerity and sound judgment on most subjects, advocate the entire abo- 

 lition of the Patent Laws. They argue that the desire to publish the results of 

 our mental labour suffices to ensure to the commonwealth the possession of all new 

 discoveries and inventions, and that justice might be done to meritorious inventors 

 by giving them national rewards. 



This argument may hold good as regards a scientific discovery, where the labour 

 bestowed is purely mental, and can-ies with it the pleasurable excitement peculiar 

 to the exercise and advancement of science on the part of the devotee ; but a prac- 

 tical invention has to be regarded as the result of a first conception elaborated 

 by experiments, and applied to existing proces.ses in the face of practical dif- 

 ficulties, of prejudice, and of various discouragements, involving also great expen- 

 diture of time and money, which no man can well afford to give away; nor can 

 men of merit be expected to advocate their cause before the national tribunal of 

 rewards, where at best only very narrow and imperfect ^iews of the ultimate im- 

 portance of a new invention A\-ould be taken, not to speak of the favouritism to 

 which the doors would be thrown open. Practical men would midoubtedly pre- 

 fer eitlier to exercise tlieir inventions in secret, where tliat is possible, or to desist 

 from following up their ideas to the point of their practical realization. If we 

 review the progress of the technical arts of our time, we may trace important prac- 

 tical inventions almost without exception to the Patent Office. In cases where the 

 inventor of a machine, or process, happened to belong to a nation without an effi- 

 cient patent law, we find that he readily transferred the scene of his activity to 

 the country ofiering him the greatest encouragement, there to swell the ranks of 

 intelligent workers. Whether we loolc upon tlie powerful appliances that fashion 

 shapeless masses of iron and steel into railway wheels or axles, or into the more 

 delicate parts of machiney, whether we look upon the complex machinery in our 

 cotton-factories, our print-works, aiul paper-mills, or into a Birmingham manu- 

 factory, where steel pens, buttons, pins, buckles, screws, pencil-cases, and otlier 

 objects of general utility are produced by carefully elaborated machinery at an 

 extremely low cost, or whether we look upon our agricultural machinery by which 

 England is enabled to compete without protection against the Itussian orDanubian 

 agriculturist, with cheap labour and cheap land to back him, in nearly all cases 

 we find that the machine has been designed and elaborated in its details by a pa- 

 tentee who did not rest satisfied till he had persuaded the manufacturers to adopt 

 the same, and had removed all their real or imag-inary objections to tlie innovation. 

 We also find that tlie knowledge of its construction reaches the public direct^ or 

 indirectly through tlie Patent Office, thus enlarging the basis for further inventive 

 progress. 



The greatest illustration of the beneficial working of the Patent Laws was sup- 

 plied, in my opinion, by James Watt when, just 100 hundred years ago, he pa- 

 tented his invention of a hot working-cylinder and separate steam-engine condenser. 

 After years of contest against those adverse circumstances that beset everv im- 

 portant innovation, James Watt, with failing health and scanty means, was only 

 upheld in his struggle by the deep conviction of the ultimate triumph of his cause. 

 This conviction gave him coniidence to enlist the cooperation of a second capitalist 

 after the first had fidled him, and of asking for an extension of his declining patent. 



Without this opportune help Watt could not have succeeded in maturing his in- 



