wife, paying for the two $270.00, he pays as royalty to the inventor, $135.00. This same rate has been paid for the last twenty-five or thirty years. This large royalty is paid to the inventor, and is called protection. Continued beyond a reasonable time, it is nothing but legalized robbery. The fact that large fortunes have been, and are, made by inventors and pretended inventors, has filled the country with sharpers and swindlers, who are constantly on the lookout for an idea that may lead to some sort of invention upon which they can apply for a patent. The ease with which patents can be obtained encourages them in their undertaking. If we are to judge of the ability and competency of the examiners of models and drafts by the patents issued for almost all conceivable articles, we must conclude that the only qualifications they possess are to receive the fees, and recommend the issuing of letters patent. Principles so old that the date of their discovery is lost, that have been in use so long "that the memory of man runneth not to the contrary," are being monopolized by letters patent, until a mechanic, or farmer, if he puts a handle in a hatchet, a hoe, or rake, or changes the arrangement of a harrow, plow, churn, or washboard, must expect to have a sharp speculator call upon him for royalty for an infringement upon his patent. Or, if a seamstress cuts her thread in a particular way, she must pay royalty. If the farmer makes a glove to protect his hands in husking corn, before he has used them a half hour, some vender of patents will call upon him for royalty. If the owner of a house attempts to paint it, or repair the roof, he must pay royalty for the privilege, if his own judgment should prompt him to compound his paints with some article not ordinarily used; or to use for his roof a kind of composition not in general use. The increase in the business of procuring patents is now so great that it has become a general and common nuisance to the whole country. The following is a list of one week's business in the patent office: