wrote, and he writes in his what I can't read: he says, I "consider the plane of vibration at all latitudes invariable !" Now, I don't think I ever mentioned the plane of vibration at all: simply because I had nothing to do with it: but sure I am that he will nowhere find, in my communication, the "strange misconception" on which he comments.

I am glad to see that so good a mathematician as Mr. Osborne Reynolds has read my paper with very different eyes, and I hope that my short additional explanations were in some degree satisfactory to "S. Y."

London, July 8, 1851.

J. R. YOUNG.

LORD GRANVILLE'S PATENT BILL. Whatever the merits of this bill may be, it must be allowed to have been a great surprise on all whom it more immediately conNo one ever imagined that, in a Committee appointed to consider how the Patent Laws might be best amended, there was a project secretly hatching for the ABOLITION altogether of the system of protecting property in inventions. Lord Granville, in reporting the Bill to the House, affected a certain degree of shame at having so treacherous and ignoble a part to play in the affair. "He was afraid it might be thought he was taking a strange course when he supported the present Bill, and at the same time avowed himself of opinion "that the whole system of the Patent Laws was unjust to the public, disadvantageous to inventors, and wrong in principle." If the bill in its ensemble could be considered as one for the "amendment of the laws touching Letters Patent for Inventions," the course taken by his lordship would have been "strange" indeed; but being, as it really is, a bill calculated to do more harm than good to patentees and inventors, a bill to obstruct as much as possible the protection of property in inventions, there was nothing at all strange in the case. Lord Granville, on taking the bill under his charge, was but acting in perfect consistency with his (now) declared views on the subject; and all that we have to complain of is,

that his lordship should pretend to be enacting the part of the inventor's friend and patron, while, in fact, aiming a deadly blow at his very existence.

Of the state of public opinion-that is, of opinion out of the House of Lords-on the subject of the right of inventors to protection, Lord Granville gave, we believe, a very exact representation when he observed :

"With respect to the necessity of a patent law, he believed it would have been easy for him, as Chairman of the Committee, to get one hundred sensible persons to give evidence to that effect; but with respect to the injurious tendency of the whole system, there were probably not six persons who could be got to give evidence in support of that view"!וי

And so, because opinion is as 100 to 6 in favour of protecting (by all fair means) property in inventions, Lord Granville thinks it only right to promote, with the whole influence of Government, a bill which has for its object, or at least its entire tendency, the abolition of all such property.

The witnesses against the system, though few in number, are paraded by his lordship as if he thought they were in themselves a host. Let us see. We detest at all times personalities; but here we are obliged, by the necessities of the case, to deviate a little from our established usage.

1. "The first (witness) was Mr. Cubitt, the civil engineer, whose evidence was entirely worthy of consideration, because, very greatly to his credit, he had raised himself by gradual steps from being a working or journeyman to his present high position of President of (the Institution of) Civil Engineers, and was held in great consideration throughout the country for his personal integrity and professional attainments. His opinion was conclusive against the whole system of patents."

Mr. Cubitt may be all that is here averred (we have no personal knowledge whatever on the subject); but how does that affect the value of his opinion on the point immediately in question? What has successful rising in the world-which may be by ways innumerable, from the selling of old clothes to pirating old inventions-to do necessarily with experience or knowledge of the difficulties of an inventor?-Or what "personal integrity?"-Or what even " professional attainments," if such professional attainments embrace nothing in the way of invention? If Mr. Cubitt had been known to the world as an inventor or projector, -if he had himself ever invented, or devised, or executed anything new or original, worthy of handing his name down to posterity,then, indeed, his opinion would have been worth something; but as it is, it is worth no more than that of any other unit of the million.

2. "The next was Mr. Brunel, of whom it was not necessary to say that his evidence was of great weight and importance."

The deuce it wasn't? The rashest, the most presumptuous, the most injudicious, and (scientifically regarded) the least successful of all the engineers of his time: the inheritor, too, of a name which was founded on and buttressed round by patents* beyond that of most men; and to which inherited name he owes fully as much as to his own talents, the reputation which he enjoys.

3. "The next witness was Mr. Ricardo, M.P., who also gave valuable evidence on the same side of the question."

Of the real value of this gentleman's testimony, our readers may judge from a specimen of it furnished by Lord Granville (we are promised the whole by-and-bye.) Mr. Ricardo has, it seems, found out-by much laborious research, no doubt that two of the greatest acquirements ever made by humanity-writing and arithmetic-belong to a period when there were no such things as patents to encourage and reward inventive genius! We wonder he did not go still further back, and, parodying Southey, de

mand

"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then your patent man?"

4. "The next witness was Colonel Reid, -author of a work on the Law of Storms,

Sir M. I. Brunel took out in his time no less than eighteen patents.

and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Exhibition. He also gave evidence to the same effect, although his opinion was derived from reading, and was not founded on a practical knowledge of the question." The discoverer of the law of storms, and therefore a good judge of the law of patents i Has no "practical knowledge of the question," and therefore to be regarded as one of the best of all possible authorities upon it!

5. "Another witness was Mr. Farrie, a sugar-refiner; and although he held the opinion that it was unjust to exempt the Colonies, if we were to have patent laws, he spoke most strongly of the injury which was done to this country by the existence of patent laws at all."

Mr. Sugar Refiner Farrie has had to pay, we suppose, for the use of some valuable patent invention relating to his particular business-for the piracy of it, perchanceand what is injury (damnum sine injuria?) to himself, he denounces as injury "done to the country." The old story!

6. "The last witness was the Master of the Rolls, who, notwithstanding the experience he had had as one of the law-officers of the Crown in administering the Patent Laws, and although he took charge of the first bill which the Government proposed on the subject, was decidedly of opinion that Patent Laws were bad in principle, and were of no advantage either to the public or inventors."

Sir John Romilly is as estimable a gentleman as ever filled the offices of either Attorney-general or Master of the Rolls; but he filled the former post for only a short time, and was antecedently but little engaged as a counsel in patent cases. His "experience" of this particular branch of the law has therefore been but small; and he has no more knowledge of what patents have done for "the public and inventors" than any one else may obtain from reading or from hearsay.

Of such, then, is Lord Granville's halfdozen minority composed-such the new lights of the age whose authority is put forward by way of apology for this insidious attempt to undermine, in order to ultimately overthrow, the established policy of the country for the last two centuries and more.

A minority, not including more than one name which we can, by the utmost stretch of courtesy, consider as of weight on this particular matter, and confessedly outnumbered in the proportion of more than 100 to 1, by the "sensible" portion of the community.

But there is Lord Granville's own opinion, in corroboration of the precious half-dozen. "He (Lord Granville) thought it impossible to hold any innate right of property in ideas, and that the only reasonable ground upon which the Patent Laws could be supported was, that they stimulated inventors, and encouraged them to discover their inventions."

So far we quite agree with his lordship; and are glad to see that he has so completely escaped being infected by the nonsense propagated on the subject of "the innate right," by the Society of Arts and others. But his lordship ought in all fairness to have added, that the Statute of Monopolies (21 James 1, c. 3), which may be called the Inventor's Charter, is expressly founded on that " only reasonable ground," and is upheld by "sensible" men solely because of the stimulus it affords to inventors. Lord Granville, however, "entirely disbelieved that in the present state of the world-even if it was different at the earlier stages of society-it was at all necessary to stimulate inventors...... He found that scientific men were in the habit of making known their discoveries with great alacrity without seeking any protection from patents."

If the case really were so, there would indeed be an end to all defence of the system of patents. But where is the proof that the occasion for the stimulus has vanished? It is not a case which can be taken for true on the mere affirmance of Lord Granville or of any one else; it must be established by abundant and incontestible evidences before it can be accepted as a groundwork for so

serious a step as the abolition of the existing law. We know not what evidence on the subject has been adduced before the Select Committee (for that evidence has not yet been printed); but if the scope of that evidence is in favour of the positions laid down by his lordship-then sure we are that this can only have arisen from some system of inquiry being pursued before the Committee by which the truth has been either wholly excluded or abominably obscured. All who are intimate with the real history of the arts and sciences, and with the views and feelings of those who cultivate them, know well that the hope of individual gain continues as much as ever to be the prime mover in the march of improvement. Of all the more remarkable inventions of modern times there is scarce one which may not be traced distinctly to this source, and to the protection to individual enterprise which patents afford. Witness the electric telegraph, the railway system, lighting by gas, steam navigation-all of which had their origin in patents, and not one of which would have made the wonderful progress it has done but for the patent system. If there is a probability that but one of these great improvements would have been missed, or even delayed a single year from the want of such protection as the patent system affords, that is of itself reason enough for keeping up the system. We cannot afford to throw away a single chance of this sort, for the sake of all that your mere philosopher may do for us from love of science alone. To talk, indeed, of the discoveries which scientific men are "in the habit of making known with alacrity without seeking any protection from patents" is mere dreamwork. We know of no such men, nor of any such free-gift revelations.

Lord Granville urged farther, that it was "quite clear that the tendency of the patent system was to raise the price of the commodity during the fourteen years while the patent existed, and it was often worth the while of a rich company to keep the sale o. a patented article exclusively in their own hands by the exorbitant price which they put upon the licenses, to prevent any other person making use of the patent during the monopoly."

Here, again, we should be disposed to join issue with his lordship. We deny that the tendency of the system is as he alleges. In a general sense, the tendency of all improvements in the arts is to lower the cost of production, and consequently the price of commodities; and there are many patents which depend for their validity on no other ground than the reduction in time, labour, cost, and price, which they accomplish. We doubt much whether price was ever in a single case enhanced by the operation of a patent. We are entitled, at all events, to ask for proof of the fact before we admit it. We question also most decidedly the authenticity of the "rich company" story, and shall take the liberty of setting it aside as a convenient fiction, till we are favoured with the name of the company, and the particulars of the patent right which it is said to have so grossly abused. There are many reasons why this story cannot be true; but into these we have not now time or space to enter. Besides, if it were even the fact, that every patent makes the article which is the subject of it dearer for the fourteen years, yet if it make it ever afterwards cheaper and better (one or other of which results must of necessity always ensue), then is society no loser, but very much the reverse.

Lord Granville expressed fears that he might be "met by the case of copyright of books, but he denied that the cases were analogous."

And this his denial he supported by some reasons which are so silly that they are not worth repetition-and not being worth repetition are not worth quoting. Never was anything clearer or more universally acknowledged than that property in books and property in inventions rest on precisely the same grounds;- both are equally the offspring of intellect, yet both alike exist by statutary enactment alone, for the sake of the benefits they may confer, not on individuals, but the public. As the inventor has his charter in the Statute of

Monopolies, so have authors theirs in the Copyright Act of Queen Anne, with the supplementary extension Act of William the Fourth. You cannot impeach the one charter without endangering the other; nor (justly) abolish either without abolishing both. The two rights must, if equal justice is to be done, stand or fall together.

In the Proceedings before the House of Lords (1774) in the celebrated case of Donaldson against Becket and others, in which the question at issue was, whether authors had at common law a perpetual property in their productions? (for there were "innate right" Quixotes in those days as there are now), the perfect identity in principle between copyrights and patent rights was admitted on all hands.

Thus, Chief Baron Eyre (a much respected authority) "considered a book precisely on the same footing with any mechanical invention. In the case of mechanical inventions, ideas were in a manner embodied, so as to render them tangible and visible; now a book was no more than a transcript of ideas; and whether ideas were rendered cognizable to any of the senses by the means of this or that art, of this or that contrivance, was altogether immaterial.... The clothing may be dissimilar, the essences clothed are identically the same."*

We have not space left to go into the grounds (briefly set forth in our last) upon which this Bill of Lord Granville's is, in truth, intended to pave the way for the overthrow of the Patent Law system, under the pretext of simply amending it; but cannot quit the subject for the present without earnestly recommending to inventors and patentees throughout the kingdom to bestir themselves instantly and zealously, to do what in them lies to defeat the measure.Every mechanics' and literary institution ought to send up a petition against it; every constituency which includes any considerable number of the industrial classes should solicit its representatives to oppose it. Not a moment is to be lost. Already

* Parliamentary History, vol. xvii., p. 974.

the Bill has been read a first time in the House of Commons, and the legal advisers of the Crown do not conceal, that it is their intention to pass it through this Session with all the expedition which the forms of the House will allow.

All that is for the present asked is a fair hearing for the invention interest. That it has confessedly not yet had; the whole of the proceedings before the Select Committee of the Lords, having been contrived so as to bring out only the defects of the existing patent system, and no one (beyond the clique of which Lord Granville is the organ) being aware that any hostility was entertained against the general policy of the system, or suspecting that there was the least occasion for offering a word in its defence. Let but a fair opportunity be given to inventors and patentees to vindicate their title to a con. tinuance of the protection which they have enjoyed for nearly two centuries and a half at the hands of the State, and we have no fears whatever for the result.

THE PROPOSED NEW PATENT BILL
"ΝΟ. ΙΙΙ."

Sir, I have just read in your last Number, the impending fate which awaits all the inventive skill that may be hereafter directed to improvements in the arts and manufactures in and for the British Colonies.

This monstrous scheme of disfranchising the Colonies, or those interested in their manufactures, is so flagrant an error, and so grossly unjust, as to demand the interference of all who are likely to be affected by this masterpiece of Legislative blundering.

I am one of those who entertained the hope (now a slender one), of seeing at least, some of the evils and errors so long complained of in the old state of things swept away; such as excessive costs, want of due security, -the dangerous liability of litigation through informal technicalities; separate patents for Eng. land, Ireland, Scotland and the Colonies, &c., &c. These defects, so universally admitted, are, however, in my opinion, better to stand as they do, in all their primitive rottenness, than that any improvement in the present law should be

based upon the annihilation of patents for the Colonies.

Let us suppose such inventions or improvements in machinery as the following, to be required for the Colonies, and applicable for the Colonies only; viz., An improved sugar-cane mill, suitable for the West Indies; -a saw-frame for the better cutting of the immense forest timbers of Australia;-a furnace and machinery, suitable for reducing the rich steel-iron ore of New Zealand, so as to render England independent of Sweden and Russia for a similar article; -or a machine for effectually dressing the "Phormium tenax," the indigenous flax of New Zealand, remembering that "one only, of our four royal rope-yards paid to Russia eleven millions sterling, in fourteen years, for hemp!"

Now, in the absence of those advantages, which a cheap and efficient Patent Law would secure, where is the incentive to invention? Who will devote money and time in the experiments necessary to success, where there is no hope for an equitable return ?

Being already a patentee, and intending to secure by patent some of the items hinted at above, I can speak feelingly as to the importance of retaining the Colonies on the list, as offering a remunerative premium to inventive talent; and in doing this I humbly hope to be aiding in some degree the present effort to improve, and not to annihilate, the law of patent-right.

I am, Sir, yours respectfully,
J. STENSON.

Northampton, July 7, 1851.

DR. RUTHERFORD'S TRACT ON EQUATIONS. Sir,-Your correspondent, "R. S." (Mech. Mag., No. 1455, p. 502), gives me credit for more influence than I really possess. I have not the honour to be acquainted with Dr. Rutherford, either personally or otherwise, and am therefore not in a position to request the information your correspondent desires. Such information, however, as I happen to possess is entirely at the service of your readers, and as it appears to fix, within a trifle, the date of the publication of Dr. Rutherford's tract on equations, it will probably serve your correspondent's purpose in this respect.