Patent brings its holder any immediate pecuniary right. He can only sue people who infringe his Patent, and the costliness of Patent suits is such that he is seldom able to protect himself. To make the property worth anything, a capitalist must take it up; but the capitalist, in doing so, stipulates for the lion’s share of the profit. Probably in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the reward was obtained by such speculators, and not by inventors. This, of itself, we believe, would not be a sufficient argument against conceding Patent-rights; but it would certainly be sufficient, if inventors could be induced in some less costly way to surrender their ideas to the public. Another reason against Patents, stated by Lord Stanley—that the reward is usually but of all proportion to the service rendered—is also a strong one, if a better plan can be thought of; but the main reason, the injury to third parties, is most serious. There is a great mass of well-founded complaints as to Patents being traps for manufacturers. Improvements and amendments in the details of machinery and manufacturing processes, which would inevitably be come at by the manufacturers themselves, are appropriated beforehand by inventors who do not possess in reality any particular merit. Manufacturers, are afraid to make slight alterations, for fear an inventor comes down upon them; but they never know but what they may have to encounter an action for “something they have always done.” Even inventors themselves suffer in this way. It commonly happened that half-a-dozen men competing in the same line of business would come almost simultaneously upon the same discovery; but if A was a week or a fortnight before B, the latter was excluded from his own discovery. The Patent-Law, then, not only does little real good to patentees themselves, but a great deal of mischief to other people. Who is to decide whether the balance of advantage to the public, through encouraging invention by offering a rather delusive reward, exceeds the disadvantage of impeding manufacture and preventing people from using what they themselves discover?