No better illustration of the results of granting letters patent for pretended inventions or discoveries, as well as of the careless manner in which letters patent are issued, can be found than is presented by the gate, known in the west as "Teel's Patent." This gate in its combination and construction does not contain a single new principle. The same identical gate has been in use for thirty years in various parts of the Union. With the addition of "friction wheels" or "rollers," or "pivot wheels" (as they are indifferently called), this gate was on exhibition and sale in many of the western states in 1863. In fact, the patent for the friction wheels obtained in that year was attached to the gate and publicly exhibited, no claim being made for a patent upon the gate, but only upon the attachment. The gate itself consists of battens nailed upon the ends and near the center of four or five boards which forms the gate, with the posts so placed that after it is pushed a sufficient distance to make it balance on its center, it can be opened, its center acting as the pivotal point. The balancing principle for which the patent was obtained was first discovered by two of the descendants of Father Adam, in their youthful days, when they balanced a pole or board across a log or a fence, and, seated, one on each end, enjoyed a game of seesaw. The little boy who built a pig-pen years before the great intellect of Teel forged the idea, made the same kind of a balance gate for it. The man or boy of past generations who desired to make a cheap gate, instinctively made a _Teel Gate_. Yet some ten years ago the mighty intellect of Teel forged the idea, produced a model and forwarded it to the patent office. The _Scientific_ (?) _Examiner_, who decides upon the merits of all inventions, who, if he had traveled and observed the common farm gate in many parts of the country, must have seen the gate in actual public use, issued to Teel letters patent, which are safely and securely held until the new western country is settled and this cheap gate is in general use, when he and his agents and assignees appear and demand _royalty_. He has been given an exclusive monopoly for the making, selling, and using a gate that is not new in any of its principles. By this fraud of the applicant and the incompetence of the examiner, the farmer is forbidden to use the old invention of a cheap gate until he pays a bounty to a patentee. The law for the protection of discoverers and inventors is prostituted, and the people compelled to pay out their money without consideration.