It may be regretted that the investigations of the recent Royal Commission to inquire into this subject (most significant against the present system is their report) were not more extensive and radical. This arose from the purposely defective terms of appointment. The Liverpool Chamber of Commerce has consequently asked Government, through the Board of Trade (that department calculated to be so very useful, but somehow in these days jostled aside, and scarcely seen or heard of in deeds), to appoint a fresh commission which shall inquire into the _policy_ of Patents. This request has had the honour of public endorsement (either in that form or in the form of a Parliamentary Committee) by no less an authority than the Right Hon. Chairman of the Commission, who also stated to the House the remarkable and most encouraging fact, that doubts like his own had sprung up in the mind of that eminent lawyer, Sir Hugh Cairns, the very member who, almost in opposition to the late Mr. Ricardo, a decided opponent of the monopoly, moved the address to the Crown for the Commission. On the other side of the Speaker’s chair we have law officers of the Crown, if I mistake not, impressed with the same dislike, and among the Radicals we know that equally opposed were Mr. Bright and the late pure and noble patriot Mr. Cobden. It is within my own observation that candid inquirers, preimpressed though they may be in favour of inventors’ claims and monopolies, reach the same conclusion. As to the Continent, M. Chevalier, Swiss statesmen officially consulted, and the German Congress of Political Economists, have strongly declared that they are utterly opposed. The Social Science Association can, and I hope will, as in the past so in the future, lend important aid to the cause. Nobody is better fitted to reconcile those interests that unnecessarily conflict, and to emancipate productive industry from trammels so hard to bear, while also promoting invention. The reader is also referred to the following lapsed _Scheme submitted to the International Association for the Progress of the Social Sciences at Brussels in 1863._ 1. The principal States of Europe and America, with their colonies, to unite and form a Patent Union. 2. Every capital to have a State Patent-office, in correspondence with the offices in the other capitals. 3. Every invention patented in one of these offices to be protected in all the associated States. 4. Each State’s Patent-office to receive copies of Patent specifications lodged in the Patent-office of every other State, and to translate and publish within its own territories. 5. The Patent to confer exclusive privileges for three years. 6. With these privileges is conjoined the right of granting licences. 7. An agent or assignee, fully empowered to negotiate for the patentee, must reside in each State. 8. Commissioners shall appraise each invention at the end of the second or third year (or later, if deemed advisable).