THE LONDON JOURNAL OF Arts and Sciences; CONTAINING FULL DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PRINCIPLES AND DETAILS OF EVERY NEW PATENT, ALSO Original Communications ON OBJECTS CONNECTED WITH SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY, PARTICULARLY SUCH AS EMBRACE THE MOST RECENT INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN Practical Mechanics. BY W. NEWTON, CIVIL ENGINEER AND MECHANICAL DRAFTSMAN : AND BY C. F. PARTINGTON, OF THE LONDON INSTITUTION. OTH VOL. V. [SECOND SERIES.] London : PUBLISHED BY SHERWOOD, GILBERT AND PIPER, PATERNOSTER ROW; SIMPKIN AND MARSHALL, STATIONERS' COURT; AND W. NEWTON, 1830. THE London JOURNAL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. No. XXV. [SECOND SERIES.] Original Communications. ON THE REPORT OF THE PATENT LAW COMMITTEE. When learned doctors disagree, Who may decide what law should be? To the Editors of the London Journal of Arts, &c. GENTLEMEN, THE direct collision of opinion between men of acknowledged skill and practical experience upon the subject of the price of Patents for Inventions, forms a prominent feature of the Evidence taken before the Committee.—" Do you conceive that any inconvenience arises from the present expense of taking out patents?" "A very great inconvenience and a very great objection."W. Newton, Rep. p. 77. 66 Do you conceive that the expense of taking out a patent now is any evil?” No. I think it would be better if it were more."-S. Clegg, Rep. p. 95. Mr. J. Hawkins maintains that the government ought to protect all in VOL. V.-SECOND SERIES. ventions, free of cost, saving moderate office fees for labour performed. (Rep. p. 128.) Professor Millington does not think the expense of a patent any evil, provided the patent was a secure property." I think it is rather an advantage that a patent should not be too cheap-the world would be inundated with them."Rep. p. 101. Mr. W. H. Wyatt observes,-" There has been much complaint as to the expense of patents. If you decrease the expense much, and unless you did it, it would be no benefit, it would so increase the number of patents, that they would become a public nuisance; for notwithstanding the great expense of obtaining patents, there are patents continually obtained for the most trivial, absurd, and old things."-Rep. p. 105. To the assumptions of the high price advocates, Mr. J. Macarthy, an inventor, gives a cool set down.-"To a man like myself, an officer on half-pay, and having a family, the price is a very heavy cxpense. An invention may appear a very silly thing, but at the same time, it may turn out a very profitable thing; and there may be a very valuable invention, that may perhaps, come to no good."" Rep. 106. That men of science, devoted to the prosecuting of discoveries, and development of the arts, should entertain a discreet jealousy of the injurious effects that would arise from allowing the human intellect to produce ad libitum, has a complete parallel in the history of the wisest and most calculating people of antiquity. The ancient Egyptians, notwithstanding their religious veneration for cats, well considered, that at the usual ratio of feline propagation, the world would be inundated with them," (to use Professor Millington's happy expression,) and so that politic nation ordered that only handsome, full-grown, and amply endowed cats should be reserved for their divinities; and allowed all the unendowed and ugly Toms and tabbies, with their holy spawn and little sucking gods, to be drowned without scruple or remorse. Our high-price-patent advocates, with equal antipathy to the embryo projections of inventors who cannot endow them with £.400 as a demonstration a priori that they are entitled to public support, would strangle or submerge them without the least, com punction. These philosophemists, with a kind of left-handed assistance to inventive talent, would cordially apply to the projects of poor inventors, the Egyptian principle of drowning unendowed kittens. The reasoning of the anti-reductionists is comprised in the following proposition:-No invention ought to be permitted unless the inventor, besides his wits, has £.400 to spend in the outset for the purchase of a patent security. Y. Z. cannot raise £.400, consequently Y. Z ought not to have any security, nor be allowed any protection in the prosecution of his invention. Scholium.-The length of the purse of an inventor, is the only true measure of the value of his invention. A few remarks upon the evidence of these gentlemen, will prove that they do not offer one reason for the continuation of the injurious and oppressive charges of patents, that will not resolve itself into the above formula. In treating their opinions freely, I intend not the slightest disrespect to the parties; but upon a subject of such importance to thousands, whose industrious efforts are depressed--whose energies are withered, and whose useful talents are rendered unavailable by the blighting operation of the excessive costs of patents, it becomes morally imperative upon those who are able to expose the oppressions of this wretched system, to obtain, by every means of fair argument, a rational, efficacious, and available amelioration of it-an amelioration that shall meet the just requirements of poor inventors, and not a mere modification of forms, and increase of security for the sole advantage of the rich. I trust these beneficent principles will form the basis upon which our legislators will proceed in this important question. An enlightened age demands measures suited to the progression of the human mind in estimating right principles, and to its advancement in the moral perception of what constitutes justice in legislation. The opinions in favour of high priced patents all rest upon the following positions :-That high charges prevent patents being taking out for "trifling objects," and that low charges would produce a multiplication or rather "inundation" of patents, to the |