We do not wish to prolong too far this answer, but we cannot pass in silence the arguments which M. le Hardy de Beaulieu thinks he has found in the facts relating to the inventor of the mariner’s compass, and to the discoveries of Lieutenant Maury. We will simply remind him of the following passage from Bastiat: “He who can gain assistance from a natural and gratuitous force confers his services more easily; but for all that, he does not voluntarily renounce any portion of his usual remuneration. In order to move him, there is required external coercion—severe without being unjust. This coercion is put in force by competition. So long as it has not interfered—so long as he who has utilised a natural agent is master of his secret—his natural agent is gratuitous, no doubt; but it is not yet _common_; the victory is gained, but it is for the profit of a single man, or a single class. It is not yet a benefit to all mankind. Nothing is yet changed for the multitude, unless it be that a kind of _service_, though partly rid of the burden of labour, exacts nevertheless full pay [_la rétribution intégrale_]. There is, on one hand, a man who exacts of all his equals the same labour as formerly, although he offers in exchange only his reduced labour; there is, on the other hand, all mankind, which is still obliged to make the same sacrifice of time and labour to obtain a product which henceforth nature partly realises. If this state of things should continue with every invention, a principle of indefinite inequality would be introduced into the world. Not only we should not be able to say, value is in proportion to labour; but we should no more be able to say, value has a tendency to be in proportion to labour. All that we have said of _gratuitous use_, of _progressive community_, would be chimerical. It would not be true that labour [_les services_] is given in exchange for labour [_des services_] in such a manner that the gifts of God pass from hand to hand, _par-dessus le marché_, on the man intended [_destinataire_], who is the consumer. Each one would always exact payment for not only his labour, but also for that portion of the natural forces which he had once succeeded in applying. In a word, humanity would be constituted on the principle of a universal monopoly, in place of the principle of progressive community.”—_Harmonies Economiques_, Vol. vi., p. 354. We think, with Bastiat, that the use of natural agents ought to be gratuitous, and that no one has the right to artificially monopolise in such a way as to exact royalties [_prélever des redevances_], which are not due, and which often are obstacles almost as insurmountable as those which invention ought naturally to remove. T. N. BENARD. [5] Unfortunately, this is not true of British law. The illustration founded on it is (like the rest of these papers) admirable.—R. A. M.