1 87 1.] Our Patent Laws. 99 



an advocate, or judge, unless after special study, never 

 fully comprehends a scientific idea ; there is a quasi 

 intelligence which passes before the multitude and amongst 

 themselves, but scientific men always retire from them in 

 a hopeless state. 



The battle between lawyers and scientists is only beginning. 

 It will be fought by lawyers as men fight who have hitherto 

 had no opponents but of their own class. They are already pre- 

 paring a somewhat inferior place for the scientific man, who 

 with his natural laws has inaugurated a mode of reasoning 

 diverging from that of the bar, and has in this beginning of 

 the revolution stood out as all reformers do as a lawless 

 person, whose character must be carefully scrutinised. 

 There can be no doubt of the struggle. We cannot doubt 

 the end. Natural law will rise and statute law will fall — how 

 far we cannot tell, perhaps, till it agrees with natural law. 

 This time may be distant, but the approach of it has begun, 

 and barristers now beginning life ought to prepare for it by 

 a sound drilling in scientific knowledge, and, if possible, by 

 a little hand labour in the workshops of mechanicians or 

 physicists. 



The inevitable tendency of the mind of the bar, caused as 

 it is by education and habit, must not lead us to speak evil 

 of the men. How could they do otherwise ? Neither do we 

 suppose they deny what we say. We all resemble that which 

 teaches us. A similar result occurs among scientific men. 

 They are not supposed to be perfect, even if triey do study 

 natural law ; no, on their side is too often shown too much 

 ignorance of the social aspects of a question, and these can be 

 best seen by the barrister. They are also too hard and self- 

 sufficient, receiving a habitually unyielding trait from the 

 necessarily unyielding character of natural law — a character- 

 istic which constant study has transferred to the man. The 

 two must learn to work amicably, but there is a large district 

 now in the occupation of the law which must be taken by 

 scientific men. 



Some of the arguments used against patents are to us 

 very amusing. The speaker, who says that a patent 

 is a monopoly, nevertheless adds that, in early times, 

 " if new kinds of business were to be established, it was not 

 unreasonably thought safe, or even needful, to allure by pro- 

 mise of exclusive privileges." So it appears that even mono- 

 polies might be given in the old way to men who did not 

 invent but who did what was equal, namely, brought new 

 manufactures from other countries. We think so, too, under 

 certain circumstances, and as a patent is for a description of 



