While I cannot handle this subject with any master talent, nor afford to devote the time which should be given to so important a subject before expressing an opinion, yet I can less afford to keep quiet and allow shrewd avarice to manipulate or titled ignorance to legislate my property out of existence. "Property! There is no property in patents," I often hear said. And how about the invention covered by a patent? Is that property? A large majority of people may say no, and deny the justice of a patent law. On the contrary, I, as an inventor, think an invention is genuine property, and as such should be under the same protection in common law as all other property, instead of requiring a special law by which the people magnanimously grant me the privilege for a short time of using what was never theirs, what they never knew of until I brought it into existence. But what is real property, and by what title is it held? Mother earth, from which we sprung, by which we exist, and to which we return, is, without question, real estate. How is it obtained; how held? History answers, By conquest, by subjugation. But these words, conquest and subjugation, have a more significant meaning than the spoiling of one people by another; they are the actual price of possession. He who, toiling, subjugates the soil, is undoubted owner of its production, by virtue of the highest blessing on record--"By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou obtain bread." And this principle is so far acknowledged that the laborer holds a lien on the product of his labor, even though the property belongs to another.