As if consent were needed to use one’s knowledge, and as if there could or should be any equivalent.
“I have seen with real alarm several recent attempts, in quarters carrying some authority, to impugn the principle of Patents altogether; attempts which, if practically successful, would enthrone free stealing under the prostituted name of free trade, and make the men of brains, still more than at present, the needy retainers and dependents of the men of money-bags.”
As to “free stealing,” hear what the greatest political economist of France thinks—
“C’est dans une mesure la même question que le free trade.”
As to the “money-bags,” Mr. Mill plainly is not aware that the dependence he deprecates is the invariable, almost the inevitable, consequence of a Patent system.
I am extremely sorry to differ on a question of political economy from Mr. Mill. But with all due respect I submit that he has not, when writing the passage which has now been given in extenso, realised what a Patent is in practice. It is the price at which the State buys a specification. The purchase is a compulsory one, with this peculiarity, that whereas the inventor may or may not offer to sell—for he is left at perfect liberty, as in a free country he ought to be, whether to patent and reveal (sell) or not—yet if he do offer, it is the State, the maker of the law, which, through the Sovereign, voluntarily puts itself under compulsion to accept the offer, and—with a defiant violation which the frequency of the deed in my view makes flagrant of sound principle—pays not out of public revenues or any funds over which it has legitimate control, but out of the means of private individuals, reached and extracted either in the form of exceptional profits on goods the monopolist makes, or by his levying of a tax called royalties on any of his fellow-subjects whom he may of grace, if they comply with his demands, associate with himself as sharers of the monopoly.
Such opponents’ impulses are excellent, but their plan is incompatible with actual pre-existent interests. They omit to take into full account the conditions of the everyday world which the statesman has to do with, and might not unprofitably call to mind a story or parable of juvenile days wherein certain wise men were represented as, after due counsel, placing a favourite bird within high and close hedges in order to gratify their tastes and enjoy melodious notes all the year round. The conditions of winged existence had not been taken into account; theory and sentiment could not be reduced to practice. Favouritism, constraint, and isolation, being contrary to nature, failed. The nightingale loved, needed, sought, and found freedom. To recall another book of youthful days. Think of Robinson Crusoe, and the many new inventions his peculiar position required and elicited. Let me suppose the neighbouring islanders saw for the first time in his hands a cocoa-nut turned into a cup, in his hut potatoes roasting in the fire, in his garden guano used as manure. What would they have thought of Christianity and civilization, if he, anticipating the pretensions of modern inventors, had alleged, on the ground of first use, exclusive property in these manufactures, processes, and applications, and had debarred the imitation for fourteen years? The unsophisticated savages would have said, “We understand and allow your claims to possess what you yourself make, but we do not understand, and we dare not allow, your claim to possess what we make ourselves. You are welcome to learn what we shall learn, and to do whatever you see us do. We cannot sell for money the odours that rise from the fruits that sustain our life; should we forbid to pick up and plant their seeds that we throw away? Should we grudge the runnings over from the brimming cup of knowledge which heaven puts into the hand, and the froth at the top which the wind blows away?” Heathens are pleased to even work at what is good for all according to opportunity. The fact is, the right of inventors is too shadowy to have any recognisable existence where there is not a submissive society to vend to or trample on, and a complaisant state to compel their submission.
If he were a member this night present with us, I would appeal to Mr. Mill as a philosopher. Seeing that the world is so framed that whereas acquisitions of material property or things cannot be possessed in common without the share or enjoyment of each person being lessened or lost, it is universally possible that any number of persons, however many, can possess and use, without any diminution of individual enjoyment, knowledge or ideas in common, do not wisdom and humanity justly interpret this as an indication that to interfere is to oppose the order of nature?
Let me appeal to him as a moralist. Seeing that to so interfere with the communication and enjoyment of knowledge or ideas by limiting the power and right to apply inventions to use is to withhold that whereby one man, without loss to himself, may benefit his fellows, do not ethics favour the philanthropic course which accords with the course that Nature indicates?
I appeal to Mr. Mill as a political economist. Seeing that the order of nature and the promptings of philanthropy are favourable to the communication of inventions and their free use, is it the part of a State to provide for the gratification of the selfish principle in man by legislation framed to endorse, and facilitate, and almost to necessitate it?