Mr. Lloyd George determined to stop this. He compromised the “Load-line”—raising it slightly for British ships, but enforcing this modified line on all ships that came to British ports. There were protests from foreign Powers. Mr. Lloyd George proceeded to negotiate. He bargained with the right of entry to British ports, and finally he came to an agreement with most of the great seafaring nations which enforced the new “Load-line” on all ships trading to Great Britain. Such was the first of the new measures which came from the Board of Trade under his presidency and passed through the House of Commons in October of 1906. Now for the first time piloting his own measures from the Treasury Bench, Mr. Lloyd George showed new parliamentary powers that astonished the critics. The wiseacres had shaken their heads. “Too much of a rebel to govern!” they had said. “So accustomed to obstruction, that he will obstruct himself!” said others, scoffing. But they were wrong. He developed new powers of adroit persuasiveness that surprised lookers-on. He was patient and conciliatory. He could be firm when necessary; but at other times he seemed all open-mindedness. He had won his way very often just when every one else thought that he had lost it. He knew when to sacrifice details in order to win principles. Now that the Board of Trade found that they had secured a good law-maker, the progressive officials who distinguish that Department pressed on him other tasks. There was, for instance, the question of the law of patents, crying for consolidation and amendment. There, too, legislation was long overdue. Consolidation was easy. But, in looking into the state of the law, Mr. Lloyd George soon discovered that there was one glaring British grievance which no Minister had yet dared to touch. Mr. Lloyd George refused to be paralysed by the terrorism of the Protection controversy. He has never admitted the view that Free Trade means discrimination against your own country. And yet that was how the existing patent law worked. For he found that a custom had grown up by which foreign firms would employ a British citizen to take out a British patent with the deliberate intention to work it abroad. In that case it could not be worked in Great Britain. For there was actually nothing in British law to prevent this British privilege from becoming a direct cause of loss to British trade. This seemed to him intolerable. Accordingly, he introduced into the Patents Bill which he brought into the House in 1907 the following clause:[52] “At any time, not less than four years after the date of a patent, and not less than one year after the passing of this Act, any person may apply to the Comptroller for the revocation of the patent on the ground that the patented article or process is manufactured or carried on exclusively or mainly outside the United Kingdom.”