The present system of Patents must be retained if Patents are to be preserved, and the evils of the system flow directly from it. It is impossible to diminish appreciably the litigation attendant on Patents. Sir Roundell Palmer referred to the paraffin oil case, which occupied the Court of Chancery fifteen days. Nor could this be avoided, for the novelty of the process of distilling paraffin was the point contested, and to decide this it was necessary to examine the exact stage of discovery to which a dozen different investigators had advanced, all of whom were trying simultaneously, but independently of each other, to distil paraffin oil so as to make it a commercial product. The expense and uncertainty of Patent litigation being unavoidable, the cardinal defect of the system, that the reward it offers hardly ever goes to the right man, follows. The inventor is at one end of the scale; the transferee or licensee of the Patent is at the other, and while the latter reaps enormous gains, the inventor often has the reflection that it was he who made the discovery for his sole reward. The second great fault of the system of the Patent-Laws is an effect equally inseparable from it. These laws constantly inflict the most grievous injustice on innocent persons. Mechanical and chemical discoveries are not made by unconnected jumps. The history of science and of invention is one of gradual progress. A hundred different persons are pursuing their investigations on the same subject independently of each other, and are all nearing a particular goal, when some one man reaches it a few days before the others. The law which gives him a monopoly denies to the rest the fruit of their exertions. It is needless to refer to the numberless instances in which inventions have been discovered so nearly simultaneously that the real inventor cannot be ascertained; and it is impossible to deny that to give a monopoly to the man who is the most prompt to register his claim often inflicts a grievous wrong on the investigators who accomplish the same results in perfect independence of him. So far we have spoken only of primary discoveries. The secondary Patents, as they may be called, were rightly denominated by Sir Roundell Palmer unmitigated evils, and, according to the same high authority, they exceed in number Patents of importance in the ratio of a hundred to one. A person suggests some small improvement in the course of an elaborate manufacture, and takes out a Patent for it. Henceforth he blocks the whole trade. He cannot be got rid of, and it is not easy to deal with him. He is quite conscious of the obstacle he creates, and in the end he is probably bought off by some great manufacturer in the line of business affected by the discovery, who, by accumulating in his hands the inventions, good and bad, connected with his occupation, monopolises that particular branch of trade throughout the country.