9 8 Our Patent Laws. [January 



officer of the crown confounded patents with monopolies. 

 The natural law regarding patents is so simple that those 

 who see it can answer the question regarding monopolies at 

 once. Is a man to have no monopoly of his own house or 

 his own lands, or will you so grind him down that he will 

 have no monopoly of his own brains ? 



Natural monopolies are established facts; artificial 

 monopolies for the interest of individuals not conferring a 

 proportionate benefit on the state it is now agreed are 

 unjust. The great East Indian Company was a monopoly, 

 and is put down after a long and prosperous life. It is a 

 natural monopoly when a man has the sole right to use his 

 own wit, and for convenience sake we give the same to him 

 who first takes possession of land. It is wonderful what 

 may be done with a word. Where is logic in the application 

 of the same word to the exclusive use for fourteen years 

 of a man's own invention ? How unfair the comparison ! 

 Fourteen years is seldom enough for the perfecting and 

 introduction of an invention. To gain a reward, an inventor 

 must work very hard and spend much money, and he gives 

 ali his knowledge to the public whether he gains anything 

 or nothing. The state takes freely, but it gives nothing. 

 The public takes and buys perhaps from the inventor, but 

 only if it can profit by the purchase. If an inventor is allowed 

 no time to be the sole user of his discovery, he is treated as 

 a useful but despised tool that takes out the chestnut from 

 the fire and gets burnt for its pains. 



One of the greatest difficulties with which inventors must 

 contend is the occult change in the mode of thinking, 

 produced by the study of law and the study of science. It 

 will belong before scientific men will be able quite clearly to 

 make their distinctions felt before lawyers. The scientific 

 man has his ideas of law and sequence founded on natural 

 phenomena. So far his ideas are imperfect, because founded 

 on imperfect appreciation and mixed with the ordinary 

 prejudices of education, society, and personality. But the 

 lawyer has his ideas of law from books written by lawyers, 

 and containing the imperfect reasons, and the traditional 

 errors, as well as wisdom of many generations. He has his 

 mind framed in a faulty model. Of course we know the 

 reply. These model thinkers have studied carefully, and the 

 wisdom of ages is in their books, but at best it is a wisdom 

 altered every year and condemned by scores of parliamentary 

 bills, whilst the acts of natural law may be seen by everyone 

 in unchanging order and beauty. The two laws produce 

 two classes of mind. This is known in daily life. A barrister, % 



