Strong arguments might be adduced both against and in favour of the application of this money for the purpose. Inventors are a great wealth-producing class of the community; they are at present very highly taxed, and receive but little advantage in return; to tax them without giving them equivalent advantages, strikes very near to the root of commercial prosperity, by diminishing improvements in arts and manufactures. If an inventor is poor and his patent is valuable, he is also frequently harassed out of it by litigation. Inventors are usually poor, and but little able to pay taxes on patents at all; their pecuniary position in this country is not greatly better than that of discoverers; they are largely at the mercy of manufacturers and capitalists; and the injustice to which they are sometimes subjected is notorious and disgraceful. On the other hand, the fund already exists; inventors also receive an equivalent from investigators, discovery is the indispensable basis of nearly all invention; patented inventions are formed by means of the knowledge obtained by pure scientific research. The poverty of a man does not justify his taking the fruits of the labours of another man without paying for them. If also the patent fees were thus applied, the cost of research would then be paid for by all classes of the community, somewhat in proportion to the benefit derived, because the cost of patents in general ultimately falls upon the public at {190} large, in the shape of an increased price put upon the commodity, in order to pay the cost of the patent, like the grower of wheat is paid by the consumers of bread, through the medium of the baker, the miller, and corn merchant. Whilst the benefits derived from the labours of discoverers, flows chiefly in the form of money into the hands of wealthy manufacturers, and finally gets locked up in the possession of capitalists and landowners, it is hardly to be expected that the Government will be in possession of funds necessary to promote research unless some such plan as this is adopted. Should the wealthy and governing classes however become sufficiently acquainted with the value of research, and of the essential and permanent dependence of their material prosperity upon it, there will then be some hope that they will be willing to contribute in a more direct manner their just share towards paying the expenses. There is, however, but little prospect of this whilst the influence of wealth so depresses the scientific education of those classes at the Universities.