ancestors demonstrated that all nature was wrought up out of four elementary substances, but now it is modestly said that there are at least fifty-four such substances. The telescope and microscope are giving new worlds every day. Even the lightning is wrested from heaven to communicate the thoughts of man-a purpose little dreamed of by the great philosopher, upon whose epitaph it is written, eripuit fulmen cœlo. We must be foolish in an age of progress like this, to be wise. We must not even cast aside the seeming absurdity, lest within it there be contained the germs of a great truth. The arts and sciences are "twain one." This is impossible, therefore it is true, argued Tertullian, in the first century, as a rule of faith. It would be as good argument in the eighteenth century as the contrary, therefore it is not true. It is well enough to make sport of the follies of science, and of those who would quadrate the circle, multiply the cube, invent perpetual motion, or the philosopher's stone, and say to each as Cowley did:

"For neither it in art nor nature is."

We are half inclined to think so ourself, but then Sir Humphrey Davy would not say positively that the philosopher's stone was unattainable, and Maupertius declared that we could not prove its impossibility. We even hesitate to put upon science and art the limitation which De Lolme put upon the powers of Parliament, the inability to convert a man into a woman, or the contrary—or to make a man altogether. There is more of modesty than of scepticism in the remark. "The province of the arts is to reduce the elements to our will and substitute machinery for human labor. By their aid a portion of mankind can be liberated from physical toil, who otherwise would have been necessitated to earn meagre subsistence by it alone. These become pioneers, and direct the movements of man and society to higher and still higher good. In this class are our sages and philosophers, our statesmen and legislators, our artists and inventors; in this class our public instructors in letters, morality and religion-those that cure our bodily infirmities, redress our wrongs and protect our rights. In the progress of the arts, the number of these constantly augments, or what is equally susceptible of proof, the whole community become placed in positions which require less exhausting physical exertion, and admit of increased development in other and higher faculties of our nature, than the mere animal. It might be demonstrated, such has been our success already that the average period of human labor is as nothing compared with what it would have been had the arts remained stationary as in primitive ages, and we been called upon, admitting it possible, by our own labor exclusively, to produce the same outward comforts for man which he now enjoys. How happens it then, since the average of labor is so inconsiderable, that the serfs and slaves in some countries, and indeed in all, toil incessant day and night without repose, or hope, to feed at last upon scanty husk? They toil on, it is said, in cruel competition with machinery, whose relentless speed strains their faculties to the utmost, admits no intermission, makes no allowance for human feebleness, but unnaturally taxes flesh and sinews to keep pace with wheels and arms of iron. It is plain that these people have little benefited by the progress of art. It is a melancholy fact which we cannot rebut,

LABOR-SAVING MACHINES.

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but which we must conceive to result from nothing else than the monstrous abuses of society or government somewhere; and if these cannot be remedied, it must be believed that God intended deformity in the moral world as we find it in the physical, to show by contrast the beauties of symmetry and order. Machinery may do much, but it can never cause the iniquities of oppression to cease, and preach with controlling influence to man from the text: thou shalt not grind the faces of the poor, nor trample a weaker brother in the dust.

But this very liberation of labor we commend, has been complained of. A newly-discovered process will enable ten men to do the work of a hundred. The other ninety pass at once out of employment, and raise the cry of injury and oppression. The stocking weavers in England collected en masse, and with fierce indignation broke in pieces every stocking frame they could find. When calico printing sought introduction into France, ten thousand calico painters remonstrated in public meetings and in petitions to the throne, against a fearful innovation which must inevitably throw them out of employment and involve them in ruin. It is true that for a season the result of a new invention often is, that operatives in large numbers beg in vain

"A brother of the earth

To give them leave to toil."

But this is for a moment only, as it were. The evil is brief, and the good perpetual. Each of these changes are successive steps in human progress. The stocking weavers will find that what in miserable madness they destroyed, was calculated shortly to give employment to a larger number than ever of their class. And when Colbert firmly resisted the suicidal policy of the calico painters they thanked him afterward, for there was more calico made a hundred times over. By simple and less expensive modes of production we cheapen commodities and put them within reach of the poorest, and indefinitely increase production itself with vastly less of labor. The man who may be printing our article congratulates himself, if he is like others of his craft with whom we have conversed, no doubt, that types at least I cannot be adjusted in composition by machinery, and so his art is forever safe. But suppose that to be realized of which rumor has more than once spoken, and a bona fide type setter be introduced into a printing office, capable of doing as much work with one man, as a dozen could effect without it. We should hail the invention with gratulation, and so would the printers themselves, could they see the whole case at once. The printing art would receive an immediate extension which no man can conceive, and in a very brief space this iron-headed and iron-fingered compositor would call for the services, with less labor to themselves of many times the number which it first may have thrown out of employ. These things regulate themselves very soon. Dr. Franklin, we think, takes somewhere the extreme case of machinery, arrived at such perfection as to discharge the whole mass of labor. An impossible hypothesis, however, unless we can make thinking matter, or, in short, a man. But admit the supposition, what then? Should we perish in this perfection? Should we be inevitably ruined because God has allowed us, by intellect, to work out our great salvation from his bitter curse, "by the sweat of

thy brow thou shall eat bread." Who will complain of such an approaching crisis in the affairs of men, when sustenance, and raiment, and all our wants shall be supplied us in highest perfection by art and nature, without the degradation of physical toil. The era may be well entitled millennial

But a truce to such speculations, which have led us much farther than we had any intention. Science we entitled the parent of art. It occurs to us that the reaction which exists between the two should be brought under particular mention. Æneas bore away from burning Troy Anchises, his aged father, and thus gave back the life he had received. The arts reflect upon science, and the parent receives new vigor from the child. Science teaches the laws of optics-the optician constructs the telescope and enlarges the domain of science. A principle discovered in nature may result in a machine, and a machine invented without particular knowledge of its principle, will yet divulge that principle to philosophy. Examples of this sort could be multiplied without end. The artist may produce a result with little knowledge of the causes. An inventor may have no familiarity with science. But how much higher the results and the inventions when they proceed upon profound knowledge. Indolent men sometimes invent to save labor, and as it were by accident. A lazy boy becoming wearied with opening and closing the valve of an engine on the old principle, fastened it to a part of the machinery, and thus achieved, by accident, what had baffled the skill of inventors. Necessity, also, has much to do with invention. The great rule is, notwithstanding, otherwise, and patient investigation in science will precede worthy achievement in art. What a magnificent conception would the steam engine have been, but we know it to be the result of years of study, of vigils by day and by night, of discomfitures, of doubts, of struggles, of sickening apprehensions, of partial despair and tardy triumph. Shall not a man be versed in the laws and principles of light, of heat, of electricity, of motion, gravitation and mathematics, before he ventures upon new combinations of matter, and enters the field of invention?

Art, then, is deserving equally with science of government protection -legitimate protection, we mean, and not that of perpetual monopolies, restrictions and corporate trades companies, such as were of common use in the middle ages. The protection of patent right is the most natural and just, and indeed it is the only natural and just one. A man, and his descendants after him, shall claim in perpetuo a right to the lands and tenements acquired by his mere physical labor; but when mind incorporates itself as it were with matter, and becomes in a subordinate sense a creator, shall there be a less privilege of property admitted in its results? Governments have followed reason here, and if they have distinguished at all between the two cases, it is only in granting a term of years and not a fee simple right in intellectual property. The distinction upon other principles is proper, provided the term be sufficiently extended.

The Constitution says, "Congress shall have the power of securing for limited times, to inventors," &c. We have legislated frequently upon the subject. The great act of 1836 elaborated a system of patent right, and carried it to high perfection. Previously patents

had been granted by the department as a matter of course, and without reference to originality. It was conceived that the courts would settle all conflicting claims. Great abuses and much litigation was the natural result. But the act of 1836 effected a radical revolution. The patent office is attached to the office of State, and a commissioner of patents is appointed. Applications are to be made in writing to the commissioner, by any person having invented or discovered any new and useful improvement on any art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, not known or used by others before his invention or discovery thereof, and not at the time of his application in public use, or on sale, with his consent and allowance, as the inventor or discoverer. The applicant must deliver a written description of his invention or discovery, and of the manner and process of making, constructing, using and compounding the same, in full, clear and exact terms, avoiding unnecessary prolixity, so as to enable any person skilled in the art or science to which it appertains, or is most nearly connected, to make, construct, compound, and use the same; and he must, in the case of a machine, fully explain the principle and the application of it, by which it may be distinguished from other inventions, and he must particularly specify the part, improvement, or combination, which he claims as his own invention or discovery. He must accompany the same with drawings and written references, where the nature of the case admits of drawings, or specimens of ingredients, and of the composition of matter, sufficient in quantity for the purpose of experiment, where the invention or discovery is of a composition of matter. He must likewise furnish a model of his invention, in cases which admit of representation by model. The applicant is also to make oath or affirmation that he believes he is the original and first inventor or discoverer of the art, machine, composition or improvement for which he solicits a patent, and that he does not know or believe that the same was ever before known or used, and he must farther state of what country he is a citizen.*

We have exhibited the substance of the law. The commissioner decides upon the merits of each particular case, and grants or refuses, as it may be, the application. An appeal lies from him to a board, appointed for the purpose by the Secretary of State. Where the patent is granted, it confers upon the inventor and his heirs, executors, administrators, assigns, &c., after him, the exclusive right to make and vend the same for fourteen years, and under certain circumstances allows a farther extension of seven years. The patentee, if a citizen or an alien-resident, pays into the hands of the commissioner, for his privilege, thirty dollars. If a foreigner resident abroad, the tax is three hundred dollars, but a British subject must pay the sum of five hundred dollars. The great distinction in the last case, shows clearly from what quarter the severest competition with our own arts was expected. A bona fide inventor may secure patent, though the subject has been discovered and used abroad, provided he had no knowledge of it, and no description had been given in any publication. This is a liberal extension of the privilege. The first use of the invention attracts the patent, notwithstanding a prior discovery can be proved, but without use. A surreptitious one by

* Kent's Commentaries, vol. II.

another, will not affect the rights of the real inventor on his application for patent.

The American law upon this subject is, upon the whole, less restrictive than that of any other nation, and appears, at the same time, to hold out ample encouragement to genius and enterprise. The English law has the advantage of not discriminating for country; for the statute of James gives title to all, if the "true and first inventors of any manner of new manufactures within the realm, which others, at the time of granting the patent, did not use." If the discovery or invention be new in England, this is sufficient, though long known and in use abroad. They hold that one may discover by travel as well as by thought. English inventions are taxed much higher than ours in the fees of patent right. The French, Spanish and Austrian laws follow, in the main, those of Britain. The whole subject of patents is one of great subtilty, and it is said on high authority not to be inaptly termed the metaphysics of the law. Men have exhausted whole fortunes in the protection of these rights by ceaseless litigation, of whom Whitney, the cotton-gin inventor, is a conspicuous example. Others, rather than encounter such difficulties, or rather than make known in petition the secret of their discovery or art, have preferred to risk it without patent at all. Few patents protect for their full term. New and better inventions or processes displace them, or what is worse, the fraudulent acts of others deprive them of all value. The hope of gain and difficulty of detection are powerful incentives to encroachment, and they will not be resisted when the invention is very important and valuable. Other inventions will be protected in a degree by their own insignificance, on the same principle that a robber will not seek a garret, nor will the blood of a "hoarse lawyer" be shed by conspirators, as Juvenal felicitously expresses it:

"Nec unquam

Sanguine causidici, maduerunt rostra, pusilli."

The law of Congress, of 1836, established the Patent office, intended as a repository for models of all the inventions patented from time to time. It is said to have given great facilities, in the classification and arrangement in rooms and galleries, for a beneficial and favorable display of these models and specimens of composition, and of fabrics, and other manufactures and works of art and machines,' and implements of agriculture, &c., &c. The building soon after was destroyed by fire, but the contents have been largely restored by appropriations for the purpose, so that at this day it presents one of the most extraordinary museums in the country, exhibiting in the highest developments the ingenuity of our countrymen, which no circumstances can control, and which seems beyond all comparison or limit. Previous to 1836 we had issued double the number of patents issued by England or France in the same time, and the disproportion since then must be vastly greater. The building in which this display is made has already become of too contracted dimensions for its purpose. The purposes of such a collection are the highest imaginable. Next to the publication and distribution of adequate descriptions, from year to year, of the progress of invention, is the preservation of plans and models in one common building.

We