We do not know whether, in the absence of all positive right which would guarantee a recompense to the inventor of the hut, a natural sentiment of justice would prompt the savages living in that country to make him a present of some useful object as a reward for this service, as M. le Hardy de Beaulieu suggests. We doubt it much; gratitude is an analytic virtue. The savages would probably have a certain respect for this man, whom they would look upon as gifted with superior qualities and faculties, but the presents would only arrive when, the contemporary generations being extinct, cheats and hypocrites would found on the inventions of this man some system of religion.
Yes, we acknowledge the truth and justice of the principle in virtue of which it is said, “Reward for merit.” But it must not be abused. Let a cultivator make a thousand trials, a thousand experiments, to give to the potatoes all the elementary qualities, all the nutritive virtue of wheat, and arrive at the object of his researches—to what recompense will he be entitled? According to the system of M. le Hardy de Beaulieu, no reward could equal the service which this individual would have rendered to mankind.
According to the system of non-property in inventions, this man would only have made his trials and his experiments—he would only have risked his advances of money, of time, and of labour—with the view of being able to sell his potatoes at a higher price than before, and, in fact, they would command a higher price, by means of which he would find himself sufficiently rewarded. This man asks nothing of society; he requires neither Patent, nor guarantee, nor monopoly, nor privilege; because the law has wisely placed beyond the reach of Patents all improvements in agriculture.[5] Does this imply that agriculture no longer progresses, that the breeder of cattle does not improve, that they remain completely in statu quo? It is not from M. le Hardy de Beaulieu that we learn that the want of Patents does not hinder for an hour the progressive advance of agriculture; quite the contrary.
Establish the same system for all that concerns manufactures, and inventions will follow one another as rapidly as they now do. They will be more serious, for those who are engaged in them will no longer be excited by the allurements which the Patent-Laws dangle before their eyes, and will no longer lose their time in running after useless things and mere chimeras.
We do not wish to prolong too far this answer, but we cannot pass in silence the arguments which M. le Hardy de Beaulieu thinks he has found in the facts relating to the inventor of the mariner’s compass, and to the discoveries of Lieutenant Maury. We will simply remind him of the following passage from Bastiat: “He who can gain assistance from a natural and gratuitous force confers his services more easily; but for all that, he does not voluntarily renounce any portion of his usual remuneration. In order to move him, there is required external coercion—severe without being unjust. This coercion is put in force by competition. So long as it has not interfered—so long as he who has utilised a natural agent is master of his secret—his natural agent is gratuitous, no doubt; but it is not yet common; the victory is gained, but it is for the profit of a single man, or a single class. It is not yet a benefit to all mankind. Nothing is yet changed for the multitude, unless it be that a kind of service, though partly rid of the burden of labour, exacts nevertheless full pay [la rétribution intégrale]. There is, on one hand, a man who exacts of all his equals the same labour as formerly, although he offers in exchange only his reduced labour; there is, on the other hand, all mankind, which is still obliged to make the same sacrifice of time and labour to obtain a product which henceforth nature partly realises. If this state of things should continue with every invention, a principle of indefinite inequality would be introduced into the world. Not only we should not be able to say, value is in proportion to labour; but we should no more be able to say, value has a tendency to be in proportion to labour. All that we have said of gratuitous use, of progressive community, would be chimerical. It would not be true that labour [les services] is given in exchange for labour [des services] in such a manner that the gifts of God pass from hand to hand, par-dessus le marché, on the man intended [destinataire], who is the consumer. Each one would always exact payment for not only his labour, but also for that portion of the natural forces which he had once succeeded in applying. In a word, humanity would be constituted on the principle of a universal monopoly, in place of the principle of progressive community.”—Harmonies Economiques, Vol. vi., p. 354.
We think, with Bastiat, that the use of natural agents ought to be gratuitous, and that no one has the right to artificially monopolise in such a way as to exact royalties [prélever des redevances], which are not due, and which often are obstacles almost as insurmountable as those which invention ought naturally to remove.
T. N. Benard.
[5] Unfortunately, this is not true of British law. The illustration founded on it is (like the rest of these papers) admirable.—R. A. M.