“Some time after I commenced these experiments, while they remained a perfect secret, and while every care was taken by this Government to keep them secret, a Patent was taken out in this country for the whole improved process of the manufacture.... One of them who is present is experimenting upon gun cotton, but it is with him a matter of extreme embarrassment to know how to deal with the subject; if he discloses by way of specification all that he knows, he sends the invention or discovery he has made away to the winds—the very night that it is put upon the file it goes to Paris, Dresden, Berlin, and elsewhere. If he does not do that, he is afraid that some man will find out precisely what he has in view, and put a Patent on the file, and tax the Government in that way. So that we are upon the horns of a dilemma.” If I were now to stop, and say not a word more, I might trust to the candour of the House for an admission that the case against Patents is proved, on the ground that the conditions of the Statute of Monopolies have been systematically violated, these violations being of the very texture and vitals of the institution. But I proceed. If the House permit, I will now advert to the new phases the question has assumed since the inauguration of free trade, understanding by that term _le libre échange_, and not _la liberte du travail_. The pernicious effect of home Patents on trade with our Indian empire, is stated thus by Mr. Rendel, in 1851:— “As engineer to the East India Railway, we had a little inconvenience the other day; we wanted to manufacture articles patented in this country, and we would have had to pay Patent-rights; it was a question whether we had not better buy the iron in India, and avoid the Patent-rights. Those cases, I think, are constantly occurring. The Patent-Laws not being applicable to India, people will not unfrequently order things to be manufactured in India to avoid the licence dues in this country; and the consequence was that I made an arrangement with the patentees at about one-half of the ordinary charge for the Patent in this country.” In 1851 it was proposed, and in 1852 an Act was passed, to limit British Patents to the United Kingdom, with exclusion of the Colonies. This change was desired by an influential and intelligent portion of the West India Association. Their conduct contradicted, and their experience proves the fallacy of, the allegation so confidently made and repeated in spite of its futility, by some interested or else ignorant parties, that inventions thrive most where Patents exist—_i.e._, where trade is trammelled with prohibitions or burdened with royalties. The home sugar refiners exclaimed against an exemption which, being partial, operated against their trade. The following is an extract from one of the petitions presented by that body:—