“The extension of this monopoly would be injurious to the public, by preventing the employment of a great number of vessels in the coasting trade in bringing the raw materials from the places where they would be dug out of the earth to the different parts of this island where they would be manufactured.
“This extension would also be injurious to the public because it would prevent our manufacturers of earthenware from being improved in their quality and increased in their quantity and value to the amount of many hundred thousand pounds per annum.
“And lastly, it would be injurious to the public by preventing a very great increase of our exports, which must infallibly take place when the body of our earthenwares shall come to be improved so as to bear a proportion to the beauty of their forms and the excellence of their workmanship.
“Upon the whole, would it not be unreasonable to extend the term of a monopoly in favour of an individual to the prejudice of ten thousand industrious manufacturers, when the individual can have no merit with the public, as he has made no discovery to them?”
The following is the “case” of the manufacturers of earthenware in Staffordshire, as drawn up by Wedgwood:—
“The potters, and other persons depending upon the pottery in Staffordshire, beg leave humbly to represent that Nature has provided this island with immense quantities of materials proper for the improvement of their manufactures; that such materials have been known and used twenty or thirty years ago, and that many experiments were made upon them by various operators with various degrees of success.
“That porcelain was made of these materials, and publicly sold before the year 1768.
“That in March, 1768, Mr. Cookworthy, of Plymouth, took out a patent for the sole use of the materials in question, called in the patent moor-stone or growan, and growan clay, for the making of porcelain, which is defined to have a fine colour and a lucid grain, and likewise to be as infusible as the Asiatic.
“That Mr. Cookworthy contracted, as the condition upon which he held the privilege of his monopoly, that he would make a full and true specification of the art by which he converted these materials into porcelain, and that he entirely failed in fulfilling this obligation.
“For in the pretended specification which he made, he omitted to describe the principal operations in which his art or discovery consisted, having neither exhibited the proportions in which the materials were to be mixed to produce the body or the glaze, nor the art of burning the ware, which he knew to be the most difficult and important part of the discovery.