459 
of Edinburgh^ Session 1865 - 66 . 
pathway of the ocean. In its manhood, it is summoned to more 
transcendental functions ; to supply, for the higher civilisation, the 
luxuries and elegancies of life ; to carry us swiftly and safely over 
earth and ocean; to navigate the fields of ether; to converse with 
the world, in accents of lightning, through the air and under the 
deep ; to bring within our research the most distant star ; and to 
reveal the minutest life which swarms beneath us and around us. 
With such functions to discharge, and having discharged them 
nobly, the inventor might have looked for a generous patronage 
from the State, and for a monopoly as free and secure as the copy- 
right of the author. 
The right of property in inventions has been acknowledged b}^ 
almost every community in the old and the new world,* and a 
patent law has been passed to define its character, to fix its limit, 
and to secure it against infringement. 
In England, I grieve to say, her inventors are more cruelly taxed 
than in any other part of the world. Though her prosperity, more 
than that of any other nation, depends on the encouragement of 
the industrial arts, yet she levies from the poor inventor — nay, from 
her best benefactor, the enormous sum of L.175 for a patent-right 
of fourteen years. In France the same privilege, for fifteen years, is 
given for L.60, paid by instalments of L.4 for each year of its 
tenure; and in the United States a patent continues seventeen 
and costs only L.7, 6s. lOd. In Sweden and Norway a patent is 
given iox fifteen years, for the mere expense of advertising the speci- 
fication. In other countries the diversities in the expense and en- 
durance of patent rights, measure the legislative wisdom which 
characterises the laws that pretend to encourage the useful arts ; 
and show us how unblushingly the limited means of the poor in- 
ventor are transferred to the pockets of ignorant officials, and, in 
this country, accumulated in the coffers of an overflowing Exchequer. 
The consequences of such ungenerous legislation it is not difficult 
to discover. The average number of patents granted annually in 
England is 2000, in France 4000, and in the United States 4000 ; 
and hence we are entitled to infer that upwards of 2000 patents are 
annually suppressed in England, and that many valuable inventions 
^ Switzerland, China, and Japan have no patent law. 
