And this brings before me, in all their glaring defects, the anomalies of the patent system of our country, especially in regard to chemical compounds. For the past hundred years, the greatest chemists the world has ever known, have given the results of their researches free, and untrammelled by any patents, though they might, indeed, have justly taken toll of the world at large for their discoveries. I need only instance Berzelius, who threw open to the world the numerous discoveries of his long and valuable life, and Pelouze, the celebrated French chemist, who devoted fifteen years of his life to the investigation of the constituents of fatty matters and their decomposition into stearic, margaric, oleic acids and glycerin. Let the reader picture to himself, for a moment, what would have been the state of affairs in the manufacturing world, had all the chemists of the last fifty years patented every discovery they made, every mode of preparation they suggested; how dark, gloomy and uncertain would the path of our manufactures have been; they must almost have stood still until these patents, and perhaps their renewals also, had expired. By such a course, the bleaching and printing of cottons, and all the numerous processes dependent on applied chemistry, would have been deferred half a century; for it is only by the quick, free application of the discoveries of the unselfish chemist, that the progress that has been made was possible. What a contrast to the self-aggrandizement of the present race of patent-seeking chemists! An individual, with the labors of the grand army of scientific chemists for the past hundred years before him, selects one, two or three chemical compounds, mixes them, modifies to a certain extent some property of either of them, applies for, and obtains, a patent. Then for seventeen years this “ghoul” sits over his mixture, and, with the assistance of a lawyer, proceeds to black-mail any one, who, in attaining certain results, is led by the properties of the several compounds to avail himself of a similar mixture. The discovery of a Sobrero is attempted to be appropriated by a Nobel and his assignees, and, with the confidence inspired by the weakness of a patent examiner, who chuckles at the delusion of the patentee, they absolutely infer that, because they have a patent, they can appropriate the result of the chemist’s labors obtained 20 years before. The patent office secures $35.00, the examiner his salary, and the ceilings of the noble building at Washington are ultra-marined, until the visitor’s eyes are dazzled with the brilliant color. Finally comes a suit in chancery, in which thousands of dollars are expended, and in which these stealers of other mens’ brains, count less on their claim than on the hope that they may so interfere with their opponent’s occupation, and so deplete his pocket with law-costs, that he will submit to accept a free license, at least, and thus enable them to terrify others into payment.