“And if they were very cheap, there would be still more obstacles in the way of good ones. I think the expense of Patents should be pretty high in this country, or else, if it is low, you will have hundreds of Patents more yearly, and you would obstruct very much the valuable pursuits.” That Patents are, indeed, a lottery in respect to the uncertainty whether the patentees draw a prize or a blank, I refer to the words of Mr. Curtis before the Royal Commission:— “We have taken out a number of Patents, and frequently those to which we have attached the least importance have become the most valuable, and, on the contrary, those from which we have expected large things we have reaped comparatively no advantage.” Mr. Coryton says in a note:— “The opinions of the witnesses examined before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1829 were almost unanimous to the effect that Patents should not be too cheap, lest the country should be inundated with them.” Among my private papers, I find in 1851 the Manchester Chamber of Commerce expressing the same fear in a letter to Mr. F. Hill, a portion of which I now present:— “It is considered by this Board to be a primary axiom that every Patent granted is, during its exclusiveness, a limitation to a certain extent of the general rights of the people, and that in those Patents which have reference to manufacturing processes there may be a disturbance of the general industry of the people. This Board would, therefore, deprecate a too great facility in the obtaining of Patents. If the cost be made cheap, every trifling improvement in every process of manufacture would be secured by a Patent. In a few years no man would be able to make such improvement in his machinery, or processes, as his own experience may suggest, without infringing upon some other person’s Patent. Endless litigation would follow, and the spirit of invention in small matters would be rather checked than encouraged.” The realisation of these fears, as well as the inconsistency of our practice with the conditions which our forefathers, more wise than the present generation, imposed, will be seen from the specimen extracts which I will now read, begging that it be remembered a very large reduction in the cost of Patents was made in 1852. The House will pardon me if it finds these extracts are not arranged with any rigid regard to order, but form a too _rudis indigestaque moles_. The following prove that there is a natural tendency to excessive multiplication of Patents, and to the making of the same inventions, and of inventions directed to the same end, or moving on the same line, by a number of persons at or about one and the same time.