626 
The Pirate's Sheet-Anchor. 
[September, 
perty, subject to the payment of certain dues, of the man 
who first breaks ground. No one contends that his right is 
“ to the prejudice ” of the second discoverer, or blames him 
as a “ monopolist,” yet the mine is less truly the property 
of the finder than is the invention of its originator. The 
vein of ore had a prior existence, while the invention had 
not. These considerations will, we think, satisfy every dis- 
interested man of the utter futility of the piratical argument 
drawn from the alleged simultaneity of invention. 
Another ground brought forward for denying to inventors 
the character of property has been expressed as follows : — 
“ What he (the landowner, or the fundholder, or, we sup- 
pose, the successful gambler) occupies, is something tangible 
and limited which can belong to him without his requiring 
to go out of his way or into any other person’s way in order 
to watch it, work it, and profit by it. True property is 
manifestly a right to an existing thing, visible and palpable, 
that only a single person, or at the most a limited number 
of persons, can hold, occupy, employ and enjoy.” 
Here again the attempt to establish a difference between 
patent-right and property utterly fails. A patent, just like 
an estate, is generally in the hands of one person, and, just 
as the landowner can sell or let the whole of, or certain 
fractions, of his domain, so the patentee can assign or let 
the whole of his interest to one person or to a number. 
There is the closest analogy between the two cases. 
Again, we admit that a patent is in itself nothing “ visible, 
tangible, or palpable.” But the same may be said of various 
kinds of recognised property. A. B. holds, for instance, ten 
shares in a manufacturing or banking company, or a thousand 
pound’s worth of consols or of Egyptian bonds ; where in 
these cases is the “existing thing visible and palpable ?” 
If this “ existing thing ” be the share certificates, they are 
simply analogous to the patentee’s official document. The 
patentee, no more and no less than the landowner or fund- 
holder, has to “ go out of his way or into any other person’s 
way ” to watch, work, or profit by his possession. Other 
persons and their ways the inventor leaves as he finds them, 
except they wilfully and knowingly come out of such ways 
in order to trespass upon his novel creation. It is some- 
times, with admirable simplicity, contended that patent-right 
is a privilege in restraint of trade. This is what every thief 
might say of the institution of property ; it restrains him, 
to his great annoyance, from carrying off and selling his 
neighbour’s goods and chattels. 
There may be sometimes greater difficulty in defining the 
