Apart from his abstract reasoning, there is much in Sir Roundell Palmer’s argument to show wide differences in practice between the cases of authors and inventors. It is undoubtedly true that in a vast majority of instances the patentee of an invention is not the person to whom the largest share of the merit belongs. The rule, equally in scientific discovery and in practical invention, has almost always been found to be that, when a great step in advance is completed, no one man can claim the entire merit. If one wins the race, there are mostly several competitors who get a place. Even Newton had rivals treading on his heels, and his great discoveries would not have been lost, though they would certainly have been delayed, if his marvellous intellect had never been directed to science. The thought of the world, as represented by a little cluster of inquiring minds, was fast ripening for the harvest which Newton was the first to reap. But no one on this account seeks to deprive Newton of his glory. And we do not see why the pioneers of practical invention should be deprived of the reward for which they work merely because what they have done is but to forestall what would have been accomplished, sooner or later, without them. The real vice of the Patent-Laws is that they give a full fourteen years’ monopoly to the first inventor who proclaims himself, even though it may be clear that he has not a week’s start of a host of competitors. In order to make sure of adequately rewarding a very few real benefactors of mankind, you give an inordinate privilege to a great many who have done nothing at all in proportion to what they receive; and not only do you prohibit every one from borrowing the patentee’s ideas, but you actually forbid a second inventor, who has arrived at the same result without ever having heard of the first, to make any use for fourteen years of the conclusions which he has worked out by his own unassisted thought and labour. This, of course, is a gross injustice, and the opponents of the Patent-Laws say that no machinery can be devised by which it can be escaped. Another serious objection to the system, as worked in this country, is the indiscriminate grant of a Patent to any one who claims it, leaving it to future litigation to determine whether the Patent is good or bad. The Law Officers of the Crown receive an enormous amount of fees for Patent business, and it is their function to determine in the first instance whether a _primâ facie_ title to the privilege is made out. It might be supposed that, if the identical invention has been patented or publicly used before, or if, on the face of it, it is no invention at all, the application would be refused. Nothing of the sort happens. No examination of the records at the Patent-office takes place to ascertain the existence or non-existence of earlier Patents for the alleged discovery; and even when there is an opposition, and it is clearly proved (as in the case of the bullet which