Lord Stanley said that, agreeing substantially in the arguments of the honourable and learned gentleman who had just sat down, he should not have troubled the House if it had not been for the circumstance that he was chairman of the Royal Commission which sat upon the question of the administration of the Patent-Law some years ago, and he thought, therefore, that it might be expedient he should state what was the result which that inquiry produced upon his mind. There was no doubt that, quite apart from the principle of the law, the details of the law, as at present administered, were not satisfactory; and, if the law were to continue in any form, he believed that in the report of that Commission various suggestions would be found by which the most prominent objections to its present working might be removed, and fair trial might be given to the principle itself. But it was impossible to carry on an inquiry of that kind, even limited as it was—it was impossible, at least, for him, and he believed he was not the only one in that position—without finding a doubt raised in one’s mind whether any Patent-Law could be framed in such a manner as not, upon the whole, upon the balance of good and evil, to do more harm than good. That conclusion, he was bound to say, was totally opposed to his earliest impressions upon the subject. He resisted it for some time, but the more he had to look into this matter—the more he had to consider how great were the practical abuses and inconveniences of the existing system, and how difficult it would be to remedy them—the more clearly it appeared to him that the evil was really irremediable, being inherent in the principle itself. On this subject of Patents there had been a certain amount of prejudice, particularly in the minds of literary men, who appeared to think that Copyright was only a modification of the same principle, and that if Patents were abolished Copyright would follow. The analogy seemed a plausible one, but he thought that, on being looked into, it would not hold water. The difference was simply this: He did not rest it on any abstract ground as to the distinction between invention and discovery, but on the obvious fact that no two men ever did or ever would write, independently of one another, exactly the same book; each book, be it good or bad, would stand alone; whereas it might happen, and often did happen, that two or three men, quite independently of one another, would hit upon the same invention. That alone established a distinction between the two cases. He was not disposed to place the objection which he entertained to the system of Patents upon the ground of any abstract impropriety in giving a man a property in ideas. To a certain extent you did in the case of Copyright recognise a certain qualified and temporary property in ideas; and if it could be shown that a man’s ideas had been of a nature to add greatly to the wealth of the country, he did not