We take it to be quite clear that the attempt to do justice ought not to be given up until the impossibility of putting the law on a satisfactory footing is clearly made out. Mr. Mundella is probably as ingenious as most manufacturers, but he says that all the inventions in which he is interested came out of the brains of his workmen, and that they are sharing with him and the public the benefit of their discoveries. Apart from the serious inconveniences caused by the law as it is now administered, no one could desire to confiscate the ingenuity of artisans for the benefit of master manufacturers. As matters stand now, a poor patentee is generally helpless to turn his invention into money without the assistance of a capitalist; but to allow a master, because he is rich enough to use an invention, to pick the brains of a clever artisan without making him any acknowledgment, would be to aggravate the plutocratic tendencies of the age, which most serious thinkers would gladly mitigate as far as possible. The product of invention and thought is a very difficult kind of property to protect, but it is not on that account the less deserving of protection, if any means can be devised for granting it without too grave an interference with the commercial freedom which public expediency demands. The subject requires a more searching investigation than it has yet received. Lord Stanley’s Commission scarcely touched the root of the matter, and no attempt has even been made to test the feasibility of such suggestions as the report contained. It is for those who attack the law to make out a conclusive case, not merely against the particular system in force, but against every possible scheme for securing to inventors the benefit of their own work. And this has certainly not yet been done. EXTRACTS FROM RECENT CLASS PERIODICALS. Along with some true light and sound sense, the shifts to which advocates of Patent restrictions are put when they venture upon argument, and the boldness with which advances are being made on the path of monopoly in the face of attack, may be deduced from the following extracts picked up at a glance in current periodical class literature:— A GOOD ILLUSTRATION AND BAD ARGUMENT.