Mr. Metford devised and Mr. Whitworth afterwards patented) that there is nothing new in the invention, the Patent is allowed to go, in order that the claimant may have the privilege of a jury to try an imaginary right. This is the way in which the crop of litigation is raised which is so often pointed to as a reproach to the law. The present Attorney-General, it seems, has introduced the innovation of rejecting the claims of patentees where the alleged inventions are palpably frivolous, but something much more decided than this is needed to make the preliminary investigation of any real value. The vast number of worthless and catching Patents taken out merely as traps for manufacturers is perhaps the greatest nuisance incidental to the system, but it is by no means the most difficult to suppress. All these evils must be cured, or sensibly abated, if the Patent-Laws are to survive; and if this is to be done at all, it can only be by an effective preliminary inquiry. That there are difficulties to be encountered in such a scheme cannot be denied, but it is not yet shown to be so complete an impossibility as Sir Roundell Palmer assumed it to be. With the best machinery a few Patents would slip through which, on closer investigation, would be held to be bad; but even the clumsiest methods of _bonâ fide_ inquiry would have sufficed to weed out some ninety per cent. at least of the existing Patents. A mere search by proper officials at the Patent-office, with the aid of the excellent indexes which they possess, would settle the fate of the great majority of applications, and the opposition of rival inventors or manufacturers would expose a great many more if it were not understood, as it is now, that any opposition before the Law Officers is a mere waste of time. Under the existing system we have a tribunal which is not, as a rule, competent for the work, and which makes no real effort to do it. The Law Officers give up the investigation in despair; but it by no means follows that a scientific tribunal, with all the aids which the Patent-office could supply, might not be found extremely useful. The experiment, at any rate, has not been tried; and it is scarcely fair to inventors to deprive them of all protection merely because a perfunctory inquiry by an unscientific and busy lawyer may have failed to exclude from the list of patentees a formidable body of mere impostors.