_Extract from the “Saturday Review,” June 5, 1869._ If the interesting debate on Mr. Macfie’s motion proved, what scarcely needed proving, that our existing Patent-Law is extremely unsatisfactory in its working, it equally proved that the arguments against having any Patent-Law at all are not less unsatisfactory. If it were practicable to discriminate between true and sham discoverers, and to ascertain with accuracy to whom the merit of every new invention really belonged, and if it were at the same time easy to secure to the man who increased the common stock of useful knowledge the fruit of his own brain, no one would dream of questioning the moral claim of an inventor to this peculiar kind of property, any more than we now question the justice of giving to an author a copyright in his own work. But when it is found, or supposed, to be extremely difficult to do justice to one man without causing much inconvenience and some occasional injustice to a thousand others, there is a strong temptation to sacrifice individual rights to public expediency. The advocates of a total repeal of the Patent-Laws generally insist (as Sir Roundell Palmer did in his ingenious speech), not only that they do a great deal of indirect mischief, but that the discoverer of the most invaluable invention has no claim to any reward except the consciousness of having enabled a number of other men to make colossal fortunes. That such arguments should be used at all proves little more than an uneasy consciousness that the proposed repeal would work a certain amount of real injustice. Men who are strongly impressed with the expediency of ignoring the claims of inventors struggle to escape the reproach of injustice by stoutly denying the rights which they desire to disregard. We would rather see the subject discussed with more courage and frankness. There are undoubtedly instances in which private claims must yield to public expediency, and any persons who think the case of inventors to be one to which this rule is applicable would do better to say so openly than to try to persuade themselves and others that those who have created the means of making wealth have no claim to share in the fruits of their discovery. Sir Roundell Palmer affected to dispose of the whole difficulty by saying that there were essential differences between Copyright and invention; but a principle is not the less sound because you may illustrate it by a case which is not on all-fours with that to which you apply it. And the distinctions between Copyright and invention are by no means so radical as is sometimes assumed. The Copyright-Laws give an author a special monopoly because it is conceived that the production of a new work entitles him to a return proportioned to its merit, as tested by the demand for it in the market. The Patent-Laws give an analogous monopoly to an inventor on precisely the same moral grounds. To say, as Sir Roundell did, that a book was a new creation, whereas an