“A great number every week?—Yes, constantly.”
Any one who has followed me in the statements I have presented will see that, while we have been retrograding and making our system of monopoly wider and worse, the Continent, to which a Patent system was first introduced just three-quarters of a century ago, is ahead of us in respect of the prudence with which exclusive privileges are granted and administered. There, as a rule tolerably general, Patents of importation are treated less liberally than those granted to inventors. The early and almost continuous working of the Patent within the kingdom is required; it lapses when expiry abroad exposes to foreign competition; expropriation is provided for; there is more scrutiny; medical appliances and food are excluded, &c.
But this is merely one, and a comparatively unimportant, fault of the system. There are many faults, as we have seen, much more serious, and which the Commission deem irremovable. I must, therefore, protest against injury done by the Patent system to our manufacturers and artisans, and through them to the nation.
These interests, the interests of us all, cannot with impunity be subjected longer to the hardships that I have endeavoured to expose. Times are changed. British and Irish manufacturing pre-eminence is passing away, not indeed by its actual retrogression, but by a simultaneous and relatively more rapid progression of rivals on the Continent, who, in not a few cases, are competing successfully, even in our home markets, in those articles of commerce and manufacture in which but lately we, perhaps conceitedly, supposed we had outstripped, without a chance of being overtaken, all conceivable rivals. The motion, of which notice has been given, is:—
“That, in the opinion of this House, the time has arrived when the interests of trade and commerce, and the progress of the arts and sciences, in this country would be promoted by the abolition of Patents for inventions.”
Unless, indeed, Government and the House prefer in the first instance fresh inquiries through a Committee or Royal Commission, in behalf of which course it is fair to allege the circumstance that artisans and operatives were not represented among the witnesses in former investigations, I submit that this motion ought to be at once adopted. Such action on our part will commend, and, in a sense, inaugurate, a principle which the nations of the world, who copied our present system, will not be slow to appreciate and embrace. Restoration of that effete system to its earlier moderate dimensions—rectification, however thorough, of the wrongs it involves towards inventors, will not suffice, and need not be attempted. The time has come, not for palliatives nor remedies, but for removal out of the way.
[2] Another illustration naively presented us, even by Mr. Hindmarch, of the characteristic logic and boldness of the Patent interest, which may surprise “inventors’ friends” accustomed to rely that our system of Patents is legal and constitutional, will be found in the Appendix.
[3] What would Adam Smith think of his commentator?