(504) . % [Oftober, 



V. THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY PATENT 

 RIGHTS. 



tHE Royal Commission on Patents still continues and 

 must keep many persons brooding over the subject. We 

 cannot entirely forget it. It reminds us, as indeed 

 every question in social life now does, that new foundations 

 are sought for our institutions, and every new part, if only 

 a chamber or pinnacle, must stand independent of the old, 

 lest it should be disgraced by a too close connection with an 

 antique model. Patents confer rights defined by words and 

 not by natural borders of mountain or shore. Their extent 

 cannot be measured by chains, and we can only see it 

 by understanding clearly the spirit of the men who made 

 the laws and of the country which upholds them. But in 

 these days we ask, what right has any man to exclusive pri- 

 vileges ? We certainly will not discuss the rights of man. It 

 is our belief that nature has not yet defined them to us in 

 their fulness, and we wait for the revelation. We know, 

 too, that man has not been able to define them to his 

 own satisfaction, except when self has been too much 

 the master. But we certainly think every man wrong who 

 imagines that these rights ought to be the same in every 

 state of society, and who denies that laws must change 

 their form according to our progress. It would be sad, 

 however, if this change extended to the very spirit of 

 the laws themselves, and if the principles of justice were to 

 alter in the very minds of men. It would be still harder, 

 however, if men were to imagine that perfect justice was 

 consistent with perfect truth or with the nature of man. 

 All great forces are tempered by other great forces, or 

 the universe would be really monotonous. A certain hard 

 reasoning in our times seeks for pure sharp justice every- 

 where ; and mercy, which never will cease to protest with 

 perhaps equal power, is called by some narrow-minded 

 men sentimental. 



The utilitarian looks only to that work which produces 

 money or goods, and forgets that man's life may be 

 better destroyed than deprived of that which may be 

 called sentiment. We cannot call the feeling of a desire to 

 be useful to society mere sentiment, but we may call it sen- 

 timent of a dignified kind. When a man labouring for 

 society is neglected and despised, his disappointment is not 

 mere sentiment, but it is a sentiment arising in the noblest 

 minds which history has seen. To a great extent our happi- 



