It can also be shown how, in another way, labour may be deprived of its natural exercise by the monopoly with which patentees are invested. When an individual has taken out a Patent for an invention, or what he represents to be such, no one is allowed to produce the object patented, or use it in his manufacture, without paying to the patentee a royalty, of which he is allowed to be the assessor, and which sometimes assumes large proportions. The result is, that the produce manufactured can only be offered in foreign markets at a price so augmented that the foreigner refuses it if some other producer, residing in a country where the Patent is not acknowledged, establishes competition. Thus, for instance, France, which worships Patent-right, cannot export the “Bessemer” steel to Prussia, because there this product is not patented; whereas in France, on the contrary, it is subject to a heavy royalty, on account of the Patent. The same thing may be said of velvets, which have been very much in fashion, and for which a French manufacturer took out a Patent. The effect of this Patent was, that French manufacturers of this stuff were shut out from the foreign markets, because outside France they had to encounter the competition of Prussia, whose manufacturers were not subject to any royalty, the Patent not being acknowledged there. In our day, when export trade excites so great an interest among all manufacturing nations, and has so much influence on the prosperity of internal commerce, M. Michel Chevalier believes that the observation he is about to make ought to be taken into serious consideration. At least it follows, according to him, that before approving and continuing the present system of Patents, it would be necessary that they should be subjected to uniform legislation in every country. Now there are manufacturing nations—Switzerland, for instance—which absolutely refuse; there are others where Patents are subjected to so many restrictions that it is as if they did not exist; such is Prussia. From the point of view of the right of property, it is contended that Patent-right should be respected, since it only assures property in invention in the interest of him to whom the community is debtor. M. Michel Chevalier sees in this argument only a semblance of the truth. We must first inquire whether an idea may really constitute an individual property—that is, exclusive personal property. This pretension is more than broached. A field or a house, a coat, a loaf, a bank-note, or credit opened at a banker’s, readily comply with individual appropriation, and can hardly even be otherwise conceived of; they must belong to an individual or to a certain fixed number of persons; but an idea may belong to any number of persons—it is even of the essence of an idea that once enunciated, it belongs to every one.