WORKING MEN AS INVENTORS.

Somewhat to my surprise, I am led to apprehend that the interest of working men will be represented as coinciding with retention of invention monopoly. I hope they are too wide awake to believe such a fallacy, and too upright to approve of the continuance of a proved national disadvantage, even though it were not a fallacy. If Patents are injurious to the community by raising prices of articles of consumption and utility, then the operative and labouring classes, inasmuch as they constitute the bulk of the population, must be the chief sufferers. If Patents interfere with labour in any direction, and tend to drive trade away from our island, they, as the mainstays of industry, must be the chief sufferers. The only pretence for such an allegation as I am combating is this: some inventions in all trades, many inventions in some trades, are made by artisans, who therefore will lose this form of reward. True enough; but is the reward to these few individuals a compensation for the evils inflicted on the many—the millions? and is not the reward often so like the gift of a white elephant, or the catching of a Tartar—so much of a delusion, a difficulty, a disadvantage, a snare, a ruin—that their wisest counsellors would warn against its fascination, especially if through their own favour for my propositions there is the choice of fair and satisfactory alternative recompenses? The position of working men in respect to Patents is frequently dealt with in this compilation; their attention and co-operation I respectfully invite.