Lastly, in the case of some truly great discovery it would be natural to award a national recompense to the inventor. If James Watt, for instance, had received from the British Parliament a handsome sum, every one would have applauded it. These rewards would not impoverish the Treasury, since similar cases are of rare occurrence. In recapitulation, Patent-right may have been allowable in the pasts when science and manufactures had not yet formed so close and intimate a union. It was advisable to attract towards manufactures, by means of exceptional inducements, the attention of those who made a study of the sciences. But now that the union is consummated, Patent-right has ceased to be a useful auxiliary to industry. It is become, instead, a cause of embarrassment and an obstruction to progress. The time is come to renounce it. Another speaker at the meeting, M. PAUL COQ, thought that, on a question so delicate and controverted history furnishes instruction which directs to a right solution. Notably Franklin, a genius eminently practical, declared himself unwilling to avail himself, as to his numerous discoveries, of any Patent. The refusal of this great man is founded upon the principle that every one receives during his whole life ideas and discoveries from the common fund of knowledge by which all profit, and therefore ought, by reciprocation, to let the public freely benefit by every invention of his. This, with Franklin, was not a mere sentimental truth, but a practical conviction, based upon reasons worthy of the author of “Poor Richard.” There is in the bosom of society a constant exchange of beneficial thoughts and services. Every one stimulated by the efforts of others ought, in the spirit of equity, to make the community participants of the improvements and useful applications for which he has in a manner received payment in advance. On this system, equality, competition, and freedom of industry find their account in the law of reciprocity; whereas, on the footing of privilege established and defined by the theory of Patents, there is created an artificial property, along side of that rightful property which has in it nothing arbitrary or conventional, and depends simply for its existence on civil law. These circles, thereby traced round the inventor and his discovery, are so many hindrances and so many obstacles to the expansion of forces, in the way of continuous progress. Under pretext of maintaining individual rights, improvement is in reality paralysed by superimposed difficulties, and especially litigation without end, on account of which nobody dare touch, either far or near, what has been appropriated. The numerous actions at law, raised with a view to ascertain whether such and such a process constitutes a perfectionation, a new application, or merely an imitation, are my proof. There is another proof in the distinction attempted to be made between matters patentable and methods scientific which may not be patented.