A communication from Professor Thorold Rogers, and remarks on a recent Review, are given herewith, the former on account of its value as a vindication of economic truth and justice, the latter by way of correcting the reviewer’s accidental mistakes.
The Daily News, in a leading article on the 27th July, having attached importance altogether undue to a small meeting called under peculiar circumstances on the 24th, which was supposed to express opinions and wishes of artisans and operatives,[1] I addressed letters to that influential paper, which will be found in its issues of the 29th, 30th, and 31st. Of course Sir Roundell Palmer, who did the promoter of the meeting the honour to take the chair, had not, any more than myself, the smallest connexion with its origination and arrangements.
Appended are suggestions and information regarding Copyright, which came in my way while in the press about Patent-right, and which may be useful if international negotiations are contemplated for one or other or both of these kindred subjects.
I hope imperfections of translation, which I regret, and errors of the press, for which I take blame without correcting them, will be indulgently pardoned, as well as faults entirely my own in the unaccustomed part of advocate and compiler.
July 31.
⁂ No rights are reserved. Mr. Macfie will be glad to be favoured, at Ashfield Hall, Neston, Chester, with a copy of any transcripts made or any printed matter illustrating the question of Patents.
[1] When members of “Inventors’ Associations” ask mechanics to join a crusade against freedom of industry, the best rejoinder is to ask a statement in writing to show how it can be for the interest of the millions to perpetuate fetters for the sake of investing a few hundred individuals with a chance of obtaining personal advantage by means of the power of fettering.