We will quote one example of a thousand from M. Louis Reybaud’s excellent work on wool. Speaking of the wool-carding machines, the learned Academician thus writes: “There may be cited twenty names engaged in these discoveries, incomplete as a whole, almost all fortunate in some detail. What is incomplete is laid aside, what is fortunate is so much gain; the new comers discriminate and choose. After a period of twenty years there are only three processes in use—those of Leister, Hellsmann, and Hubner; of analogous merit, and each having its partisans. Will they strive one with another? No, they compromised. M. Holden gets the assignment, and also acquires, either by purchase or by judicial decisions, the rights of Donisthorpe, Noble, and Croft. Messrs. Schlumberger and Co., the assignees of Heilman, retain only the manufacture of certain machines. We may imagine the wealth of a business established on so many purchases and decisions. M. Holden has added inventions of his own, and _he may be considered the master of wool-carding until his Patents expire_. Nothing is more interesting than the answers he gave on this subject before the Commission on the Commercial Treaties. On his own avowal he is proprietor of 45 Patents, 28 taken by himself, and 17 purchased from others. In these 45 are good, middling, and bad. He works them all _in obedience to the law_ and _to guard against lapses_. In the bad, as well as the good, there is an idea to defend and a chance of upsetting; he fears that in abandoning them they might be used against him; _for one machine in constant use there are forty-four which make a pretence of working; he does not hide it—it is his interest to hinder, as much as to work_. What would it be if, as it is demanded, property in invention, put on the same footing with property in the land, were perpetual? By the present system it may be the interest of one man to fetter improvement, and, having acquired the mastery of it, to mortally wound it wherever it appears! Is this not already too much the case? Must we, then, repeat what reason and experience teach us, that unjust exactions cannot be made under a system of open competition, but always spring up under the shelter of privilege? VII. The eminent Professor of the “Musée de l’Industrie Belge” makes a just and well-founded criticism on the diverse laws of different countries relating to Patents. Usually law-makers do not appear so perplexed, nor contradict themselves so frankly; this is because, when we forget what is right, when we leave principles to make a legal caprice, we sail over unknown seas, where no lighthouse guides us, nor compass shows us the right direction. He attributes to the defective state of these laws “the almost unanimous censure displayed either against the legislation or against property in inventions.”