XII.
In his twelfth and last paragraph the learned Professor answers several minor objections to the system of property in inventions—objections which seem to us not to carry great weight.
However, in answer to the objection taken from the case of two applications for similar Patents, made at intervals of a few minutes only, the eminent economist says that this case occurs only at rare intervals, and making light of the rights of the slower, affirms that it is not worth considering. Does not this denial of a right on account of its infrequency, however, seem to show how arbitrary and artificial is the constituting of property in invention?
We are among those who believe in the harmony of all economic relations, of all legitimate interests; and when we see the right of one sacrificed to false exigencies, we mistrust the exigencies. We believe them unjust and contrary to the principles of equity, which forms the basis of all economic science. We should wish to have seen M. le Hardy de Beaulieu more logical in his deductions, claiming, as he has done, for real property [la propriété foncière] that the right of one ought to prevail over the interest of the greater number, and give a chance of obtaining an indemnity, if he could not be assured of a part of the property [Donner ouverture a l’obtention d’une indemnité si l’on ne pouvait lui assurer une part de propriété].
But we repeat, these questions of the arrangement [organization] of property, which we do not acknowledge, are beyond our province, and if we accidentally touch upon them, it is only to show how little the foundations of this right are similar to those on which rests the principle of material property.
In recapitulation, we reject property in inventions and the advantages claimed for it, because it seems to us that all this scaffolding of legal prescription and Government protection only results in throwing out of their natural course a crowd of workmen who would become more useful to society and to themselves in ceasing to pursue chimeras.
We reject the proposed assimilation of this property to that of the soil, because the privilege sought to be created cannot fail to hinder and lessen the right of each member of the body politic. We reject this privilege because nothing justifies it; the services rendered to society by inventors being nowise different in their nature from those daily conferred by skilful manufacturers, intelligent agriculturists, savants, navigators, &c.
Finally, we reject it because history attests that great discoveries were made before there was any conception of such property, and that it could hardly be in operation at this day, except with regard to modifications, or, if you will, improvements [perfectionnements], which do not merit this abstraction from the common right.
Additional Chapters (from the May Number of the Journal des Economistes).
The question of granting or denying a property in inventions is of such importance that the discussion raised by the honourable Belgian Professor, M. le Hardy de Beaulieu, ought not to be allowed to drop, and that we should try to renew it.
We believe it to be of importance for the future of manufactures and of progress, and most especially to the security of real property, that whatever is doubtful and disputed in this question be deeply studied, and that all should be agreed as to what property is, and if this title ought to be applied to all or any of the inventions which daily start up.
M. le Hardy de Beaulieu pretends that one of the most frequent errors of those whose enlightenment ought most to guard them against it is to believe that property being inherent in matter, is, like it, imperishable, and that property in land especially is as durable as the land itself. He adds that we should beware of it, because this error lays open landed property without defence to the attacks of communists and socialists, who, sliding down the incline of irresistible logic, are fatally led to declare all property illegitimate, to whatever purpose it is applied.
Here, it seems to us, is a misunderstanding which may be easily explained.
We do not believe that property is inherent in matter, any more than we believe that value is confined to any given substance. We believe that property is the result, the consequence, of human labour which has been incorporated in matter. As long as value conferred on land by labour endures, so long the property has a raison d’être, and cannot be contested. It is labour which has allowed the utilisation of the productive faculty of the soil, and productive faculty remains, like the property, as long as labour is bestowed in preserving, improving, and increasing it.
M. le Hardy de Beaulieu adds that he could cite numerous examples of lands abandoned or sold at a nominal price by their owners, either because they had exhausted and rendered them unproductive by an unintelligent culture, or because they had not been able to withstand the competition of more fertile soils, recently brought into cultivation or brought nearer the common centre of consumption by a considerable reduction in the expense of transport.
We do not contest this fact, of which the exactness may be verified any day in the increase or diminution of the value of property induced by the various changes brought about either in the grouping of the population, in the modes of culture, or in the means of transport. There are, however, few lands completely abandoned; to find examples, we should probably have to go back to those fatal times when by force of conquest proprietors were removed or all their means of culture and production were suddenly seized.
But we do not see how this can help the argument of M. le Hardy de Beaulieu. It has small relation, it seems to us, to the question of property in inventions, that—perpetual by law, as long as labour continues and renews it—landed property should sometimes come to an end by occurrences or violence such as we have been speaking of.
However, to state all our thoughts on the subject of landed property, we must confess (and here may be seen in all its clearness the radical difference between placing under culture, or cropping land, and working an idea), the vindication of property is found in the fact that land can only be cultivated by one at a time, must be subject to one will, and under one direction. It would be to my injury and the injury of the entire community that Peter should be allowed to plant potatoes in the field where Paul has already sowed wheat, or that James should open a quarry where John has built a house, and so on.
As we have already said, the power of the lever, the laws of gravity, those of the expansion of steam, the attraction of the magnet, the caloric of coal, the facility of traction imparted by the wheel, the optical properties of glass, &c., may be utilised to the great profit of all, in a thousand different ways, by a thousand individuals at once, without the efforts of any one being diminished, hindered, obstructed, or lessened, as to their useful result, except by the beneficent laws of competition.
“The first cause of property,” says M. Matthieu Walkoff,[4] “is the impossibility of matter being moved in more than one direction at one time, or, to state it otherwise, of its being subject at one time to more than one will.” “If matter,” says this eminent economist, “were gifted with ubiquity, like ideas, knowledge, or truth, which several may use simultaneously, and each in his own way, property would never have been constituted; and it is even difficult to imagine how any idea on this phenomenon could have arisen in men’s minds.” “In fact,” he adds, “to preserve property in an idea would have required that it should never have been expressed nor practised, to hinder it, being divulged, which would have been equivalent to its non-existence.”
We do not go so far as M. Walkoff; we do not affirm that the impossibility of matter being subject at one time to more than one will is the first cause of property; but we say it is the distinctive character of property, and, like him, we cannot see a subject, for property is a shape, plan, or system, which, to see once, as in a spade, the wheel, the corkscrew, is to possess an indelible idea.
Besides, the author whom we have quoted expresses so clearly our opinion on this subject, that we must further borrow from him the following quotation, which will not be uncalled for at a time when property itself is threatened. It is of importance that the lawful bounds should be carefully marked:—
“Economists have too much neglected the first cause of the perpetual subjection of matter to exclusive property. They made property to be derived only from a man’s original possession; from himself and his acts; that which leads to possession of the result of his activity. But this reasoning only establishes the indisputable right of the appropriation of that which he appropriates or produces; it does not explain why exclusive property in material things is permanent, and does not show how the very nature of things renders this possession inevitable. It is to the incomplete understanding of the causes of property that is probably attributable the contradictions of those economists who, while professing the doctrine of free labour, are still in favour of the establishment of artificial barriers against the free use by every one of ideas, skill, progress, and other products of the mind, conceived and suggested, or realised, by any one.”
Let us remark here that in fact the manufacturing community, more liberal in practice than the economists in theory, are eager freely to submit to inspection at exhibitions the processes in use at their different factories.
“To require that an idea be subject to only one will,” continues M. Walkoff, “is to require no less an impossibility than to pretend that a material point can obey more than one will—that is to say, that it can be moved in more than one direction at once. It is true that it is not proposed to hinder ideas from being developed; it is desired simply to convert their reproduction or their material realisation into an indefinitely prolonged monopoly. But, in order completely to succeed in anything, it is necessary that the object aimed at be in conformity with the nature of things. Now, is it not placing oneself in opposition to everything which is most natural, this denying to every one the use of an idea? And even where this interdict is most successful, we soon find, in a manner most unassailable by the law, works copied from those to which the law has guaranteed a monopoly. The effect of the interdict is here, as in all regulations contrary to the nature of things, essentially demoralising; it begets fraud, entices to it, even forces to it, in making it useful and often even indispensable. Forbid men, as was once supposed by the witty author of the ‘Sophismes Economiques,’ the use of the right hand, after a few hours, there would not remain, in the eye of the law, a single honest man. It may be boldly affirmed that such a law would be immoral, and all those which recklessly contradict the natural order of things are incontestably such.”
In fact, we repeat, the field which I turned into a garden may not be used by my neighbour as a pasture-land for his cattle; where I have planted a vine another may not plant colza or beet-root; but the steam-engine which I have invented, or the electric power which I have discovered, may be applied to the grinding of corn, or the spinning of cotton, or to the extraction of iron, or to the draining of a marsh, or to traction by land or sea, without the productive force being neutralised, wasted, or lost, like the application of the productive force of the soil to different purposes.
Not only do the various applications of the idea not hinder the inventor in the employment which he may make of it, but if the application made by others is exactly the same as his, he is only subjected to the universal law of competition—a law of progress, if ever there was one.
[4] Precis d’Economic Politique Rationale, page 44; Paris, 1868.