tions, after being made, would not be rendered practically useful. "Very few inventions in manufactures are perfect, when first contrived and introduced into practice. Much further improvement is

often needful, in order to overcome unforeseen difficulties, and to meet all the wants of a manufacture conducted on a large scale. Prejudice, too, has to be overcome. The sanction of experience is wanting to confirm the advantage, and still more the permanence of the improvement. After Watt had taken out his patent, he was six years before he succeeded in making one steam engine according to his plan, matured in all its principles at least, as his patent and specification show it to have been. Part of this time was lost, perhaps, by inactivity; another part by the failure of Roebuck, of the Carron Works, with whom he first associated himself, and perhaps a still greater part was owing to the imperfection of machinery in his time. But, making allowances for these causes of delay, still it is true that at least three or four years were necessary, to obviate the practical difficulties that lay in the way of making such an engine well, for the first time. Such difficulties, and others too, attend all important new inventions in manufactures. The bringing of them into notice, the gaining of confidence in their permanence and worth, and the overcoming of prejudice against them, on account of their very novelty, require time, care, and much outlay. To insure success in such an under

taking, it is not unusual to spend years in overcoming the physical difficulties of a new manufacture, to employ travellers, and advertise extensively, in order to bring the invention into general notice, to make a great outlay in order to establish the new manufacture, merely as an example for others to follow, or sometimes a greater outlay in order to get it established on a large scale, so as to admit of a subdivision of labor, and the perfection of it in all its parts. Now without the encouragement of a patent, how is any man to engage in a novel and expensive process, if the moment he succeeds, at the cost of all this outlay, he must be sure that his neighbors, who were cautious enough to shun all chances of loss, will come into competition with him, and make the remuneration of all this outlay impossible? A landlord, possessing a farm that could not be made productive, till after the lapse of years, with continued cultivation and much outlay, will never get it rented without granting a lease; and unless he makes such a grant, or undertakes the labor and expense himself, the farm will remain for ever unproductive. Quite similar is the policy of granting patents, which may be considered leases for the cultivation of unprofitable farms, of manufactures, granted partly to reward the merit of invention, and partly to remunerate the cost attending the introduction of the improvement, and its early and unprofitable cultivation. By so granting patents, the country may hope, at the

end of their term, to possess the new manufacture in a profitable form; whereas, by refusing patents, or withholding from them adequate protection, it will either not possess the inventions, or, if it do possess them, it will be in the form of unapplied and barren suggestions. Give the husbandman security that he may sit under his own vine, and his own fig tree,' and the magic of that security will raise the vine and the fig tree, where else would be the barren wilderness. Watt, it has been said, spent six whole years in bringing his invention into a good working state. The late Lord Norton, of Leith, the inventor of the patent slip, as a substitute for dry docks, lost the same time, before his patent became profitable to him, although he brought the invention early into use. A like loss of time prior to the invention becoming productive, appears from inquiry, to be an almost constant occurrence in important inventions. Here is the authority of Mr. Farey, in the report" of the committee of the House of Commons, on the subject of patents, in May, 1833, "for saying, that the expense of making the first steam engine on the plan of Watt, was such as no maker could have been remunerated for, by any subsequent outfit he could make, without the aid of what occurred from the patent, or some other extraneous source. And indeed, but for the security which Watt erroneously conceived the patent law to afford, there is little doubt that the invention might at this day have been sneeringly re

corded by some author, styling himself practical, as a suggestion 'exceedingly ingenious in theory, but altogether useless in practice."""

The principles and motives of patent laws, then, are, 1, the securing to the inventor the remuneration of his outlay; 2, a reward for his ingenuity, and the benefit he confers on the community; and 3, to encourage and stimulate invention and improvements.

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The invention of lithographic printing by Senefelder has been instanced in illustration of the labors and difficulties of an invention, and the influence of motives in stimulating the inventive faculties. He was the son of an actor, and had himself written a play, which, however, he was too poor to get printed. To overcome this obstacle he conceived the bold idea of inventing a cheaper mode of printing than with types. "Nor was the success less wonderful than the attempt. Not by any chance, not by

'Westminster Review, No. 43. January, 1835. p. 94. Foster's Am. Edition.

Per Story J. Lowell v. Lewis, Mason R. 182. See Holt's N. P. C. 58. n. Though monopolies, in the eye of the law, are odious, says Lord C. J. Eyre, in the case of Boulton v. Bull, 2 H. B. 500, the consideration of the privilege created by this patent is meritorious, because, to use the words of Lord Coke, the inventor bringeth to and for the commonwealth a new manufacture by his invention, costs and charges. But Lord Kenyon says, "I confess I am not one of those who greatly favor patents; for though in many instances, and particularly in this, the public are benefited by them, yet on striking the balance upon this subject, I think that great oppression is practised on inferior mechanics by those who are more opulent." 8 T. R. 98. This is quite an extrajudicial reason.

a first lucky hit, but by contrivance, by experiment, by perseverance amid disappointment, and by knowledge extended from failures, he succeeded in accomplishing this daring effort of his genius, and discovering an art which, if it cannot vie with other ways of printing for extensive utility, will yet, for inventive merit, and with reference to the hopelessness of the rude but simple materials whereby it is worked, ever be ranked among the most wonderful of human inventions.'

The grounds and motives of this species of legislation being, then, in the first place, to indemnify inventors, in the second to secure to the public the benefit of invention, and stimulate ingenious minds to make improvements, and, in the third place, to reward the inventors as public benefactors, according to the importance of their inventions, it follows that the earlier or later disclosure of the secret, and the investing of the public with the benefits of the discovery, are essential conditions of the grant of protection and reward. It is, as M. Renouard says, an exchange between the two parties, the inventor on one side, who grants the community a new art or machine, and the community on the other, which grants in return to the inventor, indemnity and compensation. But as the publicity of the invention is a matter of public

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• Westminster Review, No. 43, for January 1835.