622 
The Pirate's Sheet Anchor . 
[September, 
Illinois, destroying Camanche, and killing fifty persons. 
That would not be an unusual railroad accident or ocean 
disaster. We stand a hundred chances of being killed in 
ordinary travel to one chance of being killed by a tornado. 
Still, we take our sleeping berth and fall into a quiet slumber. 
Tornadoes also occur just before evening, and, if we re- 
member the law of their movement, we can generally escape 
them. Although, then, we may never be killed by a tornado, 
still it is always well to keep a clear conscience . — Kansas 
City Review of Science and Industry. 
VI. THE PIRATE’S SHEET-ANCHOR. 
S HE common-sense doCtrine that the right of an in- 
ventor to the creations of his own mind is the most 
natural and sacred of all kinds of property, though 
substantially self-evident, is far from meeting universal ac- 
ceptance. That our ancestors in their ignorance ranked 
copy-right and patent-right among “ monopolies ” — just as 
they classed the whale among fishes, and confounded astro- 
nomy with astrology — is an unfortunate circumstance, which 
cannot, it seems, be forgotten. In a political economist the 
very word brings on a state of fury bordering on madness. 
Call any institution, right, or possession a “ monopoly,” and 
he strives to destroy it without further question. 
For the benefit of persons capable of judging soberly and 
righteously, it may be well to examine the ostensible grounds 
on which pirates rely when they proclaim patent-right not 
property, but a mere privilege. 
Their first argument is one which it is simply astonishing, 
and even painful, to hear from any man of mature age and 
good education. It is in substance this, that as an inven- 
tion is often sought after or aimed at, and sometimes even 
attained, by several persons simultaneously, it cannot, when 
completed, be considered the property of any person ! That 
we may not be accused of unfairness I will use the very 
words of the piratical school, as given in the “ Dictionary 
of Science, Literature, and Art,” by W. T. Brande and 
Rev. G. W. Cox (article “ Patents,” vol. ii., p. 834). The 
article in question appears to be from the pen of Professor 
Thorold Rogers, though we have no right to assume that 
the views expounded are his own, since he introduces them 
