Public attention has for some little time been withdrawn from the consideration of the Patent-Laws; but, if we may judge from the discussion upon the subject in the House of Commons last night, the day is at hand when this branch of our legislation will be wiped out of the statute-book. It is impossible to withstand the weight of authority and reason advanced yesterday. It was all on one side. Mr. Macfie, the newly-elected member for Leith, introduced the subject, and, incited apparently by injuries he had himself suffered through the operation of the Patent-Laws, argued very vigorously against them on theoretical and practical grounds. He was not left unsupported. Sir Roundell Palmer, who, had he consulted his private interest, would certainly have been among the first to uphold a system productive of such immense pecuniary benefits to the practitioners in the courts, seconded Mr. Macfie’s motion for the unconditional abolition of the Patent-Laws in a speech of the closest reasoning, supported by a vast array of facts which had come within his own personal experience. He was followed by Lord Stanley, who confessed that, against all his early prepossessions, he had been convinced, when acting as Chairman of the Patent Commission, that the abolition of the Patent-Laws was demanded on grounds of justice and of sound policy. Two of the foremost representatives of law and of statesmanship thus enforced the reform demanded by Mr. Macfie as a spokesman for manufacturers. It is true that others followed who opposed, or attempted to oppose, the arguments of Sir Roundell Palmer and Lord Stanley. This was inevitable. Men who have not looked into the question are in the same position as Lord Stanley says he himself was when he first began to consider it. They are under the influence of impressions they have never thought of questioning, and are biased by supposed analogies, drawn from cognate subjects, the unsoundness of which they have not investigated. Hence they protest, not without vehemence, against an amendment of the law which is in conflict with their own habits of thought, but they do not reason upon it. Analyse the speeches delivered last night by Mr. Howard, Mr. Mundella, and, we must add, the Attorney-General, and the residuum of argument contained in them will be found to be very small indeed. They are all satisfied the Patent-Laws have been useful to the nation, as people were once satisfied that the Corn-law was the secret of our greatness. They insisted that the abolition of the Patent-Laws would be a blow to our national pre-eminence, just as their predecessors agreed in predicting not so long ago that with the abolition of the Corn-laws Old England would dwindle and decay.