1871J Our Patent Laws. 10 



and want of communication among manufacturers, are 

 productive of the same stagnation as the want of roads in a 

 country. 



Some persons are quoted as saying that if there were no 

 artificial rewards the inventors would be as numerous as at 

 present. That is only half true. Poems would be as 

 numerous; mathematicians would be, and scientific men 

 generally might be, but even Sir W. Armstrong forgets the 

 expense of bringing out an invention. A man might give 

 his idea for the honour, but would he give the time and 

 expense of trying it, and, until he does so, the idea is 

 valueless to the public. The public gives the patentee 

 nothing for his idea. They pay for the soap he makes, or 

 the pens, or the cannons ; and the country knows to its cost 

 how much money experiments on the latter require. Not 

 only would real finished inventions be fewer, but it is a 

 necessity of the case that it should be so. The inventor 

 obtains money on loan frequently, to be able to complete his 

 invention. It is only because he can afterwards make 

 money by having the exclusive use of the patent for a while 

 that he can borrow money. If no patent, then no experi- 

 ments. There would be as many ideas, perhaps — that is to 

 say, the brains of men^might wander as much — but a finished 

 invention is a serious and expensive affair. We have too 

 often seen the inventor in the throes of his study and struggle 

 of experiment to doubt this, and we have seen it last too 

 many years to be led by the fancies of men who seem never 

 to have lived at the heart of the nation, nor seen the method 

 in which the blood moves. 



But do the patent laws present to us no difficulty ? Do 

 we pretend to see all clearly where others have been 

 perfectly blind or given to ghost-seeing ? We have no such 

 satisfaction. Still, without pretending to know how to 

 settle the question, we have confidence that every difficulty 

 will be cleared away regarding English patents by a broad, 

 common-sense view of an invention. We should like to 

 get rid of the exclusively lawyers' mode of viewing facts, 

 and- of his humiliating and time-wasting formalities. When 

 we look abroad we have no difficulty in seeing how some 

 countries can get on without patents. Switzerland has none. 

 It obtains inventions by taking from other countries such 

 as suit it. Being small, it has the best of it. So practically 

 does Prussia to a great extent. Nations are selfish, and 

 if they can gain by robbery, they will find a new name for 

 the offensive act. 



The opinion of Count Bismarck on patent laws is to be 



