self; but it is perhaps a proof of the Pope's wish not to connect himself directly with the publication, that the title-page bears the date of Venice. The papal patronage made it necessary for public bodies, and all aspirants to favour, to become subscribers. But this can hardly be counted a grievance. The work appears to be ably executed, and contains a great deal of information which it would cost not a little trouble to find elsewhere; but it has the fault of diffuseness and prolixity; it has already exceeded the 80th volume, and is not yet brought to a close.

Gregory's reign was protracted for fifteen years without any change of system on the part of the Government, and with an accumulating mass of discontent on the part of the people. The barrier which he toiled to maintain might keep the waters of bitterness within limits for a space, perhaps for his lifetime, but the outbreak was inevitable: if the barrier was weakened by concessions, the crisis would be precipitated; if it were strengthened for further resistance, the overflow was not less certain, and might be more destructive. When Gregory, after a short illness, breathed his last, on the 1st of June, 1846, it required no great political wisdom to see that little was left for his successor but a choice of faults. Whether it might have been possible to steer so dexterously a middle course as to grant administrative reform without risking organic change, must remain a matter of speculation. If such a via media existed, the unhappy Pius IX. failed to find it.

It cannot be denied that the last four Popes,' who have filled with their reigns nearly the first half of this century, are men who had the great merit of acting up to their principles. They have succeeded in extending the authority of the Roman see, in diffusing ultra-montane opinions, and in fostering a spirit of superstition which had been banished from the educated classes of Europe. That all this is unfavourable to the progress of Christianity we do not doubt: how soon in the inevitable reaction it will be prejudicial to Rome herself, we do not venture to predict. It is not our fault that in putting together these biographical sketches we have been unable to make more use of the Cardinal's materials. His volume is more deficient in facts and in details, more utterly meagre and barren, than could have been supposed possible, when it is remembered that the author was actually resident on the spot during the greater part of the reigns he celebrates. It may be that he writes without the aid of contemporary notes. It may be that the times were so critical for the papacy, and the subjects to be handled are so dangerous, that a man of the Cardinal's rank in the Church can scarcely treat them at all, except in the most general manner; or it may be

that

that he knows only just enough of the feelings of the Protestant public to see danger and controversy in all he can say. Had he fearlessly and fully given utterance to his own impressions; had he told us the events of the day and the fears and the hopes they excited in the Collegio Inglese, his book would not have been without value and interest. And had he spoken of his Protestant country with less bitterness, he would have disarmed the hostile criticism he appears to dread. When we consider the aggressive position which the Cardinal assumed in this country some years ago, and which he still thinks proper to maintain by every means in his power, it is idle to appeal to his charity or love of peace. Peace, he makes us feel, is not to be purchased by fresh concessions, or by the toleration of further encroachments. Peace may be hoped for when the Roman Catholic priesthood have learned that nothing is to be got by further agitation, that toleration must be reciprocal, and that they have reached the utmost limit which in justice the English law can allow, or a Protestant people endure.

ART. V.-PUBLICATIONS OF THE HONOURABLE THE COMMISSIONERS OF PATENTS, published at the Great Seal Patent Office, 1852, 1853, 1854, 1855, 1856, 1857, 1858 :—

a. Specifications describing the Inventions for which Letters Patent have been granted from the reign of James I. down to that of Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

b. Chronological, Alphabetical, Subject Matter, and Reference Indices to Letters Patent and Specifications.

c. Abridgments of Specifications, arranged Chronologically according to the subject matter of the Inventions, with separate Indices. d. The Commissioners of Patents' Journal, published twice a week. e. Annual Reports of the Commissioners of Patents.

VERYBODY is interested in the improvements affecting

the industrial products of the country. It is therefore impossible lightly to regard the remarkable series of works of which the titles stand at the head of this article. They have issued from the Great Seal during the last six years, in a copious stream, which, under the direction of the Commissioners of Patents, has been drawn off in a multitude of channels, penetrating the country in all directions, and irrigating it with fertilizing information. These Commissioners were appointed under the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1852, to organise the new plan then introduced. The Lord Chancellor, the Master of the

Rolls,

Rolls, the Attorney-General, and the Solicitor-General, are exofficio members, and it so happens that the persons who at the present moment fill the first three of these posts- Lord Chelmsford, Sir John Romilly, and Sir Fitzroy Kelly-are the very men who are entitled to the merit of having inaugurated the amended system.

The propriety of granting patents, if questioned at all, must be questioned on the ground of expediency, not of justice. No one can deny that the man who produces anything is entitled to a property of some kind in the product. If the crude material be abstracted from what may be considered the common possession of mankind, as a pebble from the sea-shore, the labour of the lapidary gives him a special title to the polished article. It is therefore impossible to contend that when a man, by the mere exercise of his intellect, taking nothing from, but on the contrary adding to, the common stock, compiles a book or contrives an invention, he is to have no property in what is just as much a product of his brains, as the polished pebble is of the lapidary's hands. Common honesty demands that he should be allowed to derive some benefit from his own work, and the extent of his interest is determined in this country by our system of copy and patent right.

In

But while the justice and expediency of a copyright in literature are recognised, prejudices still exist against patents, as if they were a remnant of the old abuse of monopolies by which an individual obtained from the crown the right to the exclusive exercise of some particular trade. Elizabeth, 'moved thereunto by divers good considerations,' did not hesitate to grant to Bryan Amersley the sole right to buy and provide steel within her realm; to John Spilman the power of buying linen rags and making paper; to Schets and his assignees the privilege of buying and transporting ashes and old shoes, to the manifest hurt and detriment of all other dustmen and old clothes collectors. fact the list of commodities for which exclusive monopolies were granted by the iron-willed virgin Queen' is almost interminable. The sale of salt, currants, starch, leather, paper, tin, lead, iron, steel, sulphur, oils, bones, powder, and of a hundred other things, was restricted to favoured persons, who were so rapacious as to feel no scruple in raising the price of their articles 1000 per cent. and upwards. The price of salt, for instance, was raised from 16d. per bushel to 14s. or 15s. The monopolists were armed by royal authority with arbitrary power to oppress the people at their pleasure, to enter houses and search them, and to exact heavy penalties from all who interfered with their prerogative. Monopolies were in truth an excise not fixed by

law,

law, but regulated by the will of a greedy tradesman, who, having bought his right to be extortionate, was in haste to repay himself, and to get rich into the bargain.

It would be needless to dwell on the injustice and impolicy of such a mode of taxation; it is sufficient to say that this intolerable evil was at length remedied in the reign of James I., by the celebrated statute abolishing the system. But even at that period, when men's minds were exasperated by their recent grievances, the prudence, the necessity of granting exclusive patents for inventions was never denied. It was conceded that, if a man devised any new manufacture, it would be taking nothing from the public if they were prohibited for fourteen years from appropriating the discovery. Accordingly by the statute of the 21st of James, power was reserved to the Sovereign to grant royal letters patent, assuring to the inventor the exclusive right over his invention for that limited period, at the expiration of which it became common property. Yet so jealously were all existing rights guarded, that a proviso has always been inserted, making the grant altogether void if it should be proved that any one had publicly used or described the invention before. Even, therefore, after a man had expended his time, his energies, and his substance in perfecting his contrivance, and had obtained a patent to protect it, his possession was not secure. Popular fame has assigned to Richard Arkwright the merit of inventing his celebrated machinery for preparing cotton for spinning. It is not generally known that his patent was set aside because it was proved that the device was not new-and among the reasons which were held to render his claim void, one was that a description of the jenny was contained in a work of Emerson before the date of the grant. Such is the law, and such it has been since the days of King James; and it is therefore impossible to contend that patents encroach on existing rights, when the moment this is demonstrated they die a natural death.

So far are patents from having a restrictive effect, that they either furnish the world with a new agency, or afford it the means of using an old one more economically. As the invention must be useful, or a valid patent cannot be granted, and as it must be something of which the public are ignorant, it follows that a novel and valuable addition has been made to the existing stock. Meanwhile every one is free to choose between the old method and the new; and assuredly, if the latter is not offered on such terms as make it worth while to adopt it, there will be no

* See the summing up of Mr. Justice Buller-Davis's Patent Cases, p. 129.

purchasers,

The

purchasers, when the evil immediately works its own cure. interests of the patentee will compel him to adapt his price to his market. Checked by the competition of the former system, which up to his time served the purpose of the consumer, he must either offer a cheaper article, or, what is the same in effect, an article so superior that it can be more economically employed. If, however, he should be blind to his own interests, the public may perhaps suffer to a certain extent; but they are only kept out of what they never enjoyed, and the inventor after all cannot play the dog in the manger for a longer period than his fourteen years. Meanwhile, rivals would be stimulated to exertion in the direction pointed out by his contrivance, and would perhaps eclipse it. The persons interested in the subject have at least got a hint where before they had nothing. Having examined the objections made against patents on the ground of the obstructive character that may be imputed to them, we proceed to describe the mode in which these grants work, and the relative effects produced by them on the patentee and the public. No better illustration could perhaps be chosen than the most famous of all patents, that of James Watt for a new method of lessening the consumption of steam and fuel in fireengines.' This title distinctly states the object of Watt's invention, and points at its real merit, about which great misapprehension exists, for Watt is often called the inventor of the steam-engine, though steam-engines were used long before his time. When his contrivance was completed, being perfectly satisfied in his own mind of its value, he went to London in August, 1768, to make arrangements for taking out a patent for it.' He may be supposed to have begun by making inquiries about the prior patents which had been granted to other improvers of fire-engines. He doubtless knew well all that Savery and Newcomen had done; but he might think it necessary to ascertain if Denis Papin had gone further than people usually thought. He might feel desirous of looking at the specifications describing the fire-engines patented by James Brindley in 1758, by Henry Woodin in 1759, and the fire-engine and boiler patented by Joseph Hately on March 8, 1768-the specification of which was probably enrolled only a few days before Watt's arrival in London. Patents are granted on condition that the patentee shall, within six months of the date of the grant, file a specification which exactly describes his invention. These specifications are written on skins of parchment, stitched together so as to form a long scroll, which is kept rolled up. Many specifications may be contained in the same roll, and it was a matter sometimes of great difficulty to consult them, as a given specification might be at

the