If in the future we could hope to persuade the
legislators to be content with no heavier tax than in the United States
had yielded a heavy surplus over expenses of a well-conducted Patent
Office, he did not fear to assert that the number of patents taken out in
this country would again be trebled, and that trade and industry would be
correspondingly animated and developed. The result of the wiser patent law
of the United States had been to flood our markets with well-manufactured
yet cheap articles from that country which might have been equally well
made by our artisans at home had invention not been subject to such heavy
restrictions, and had technical skill been equally sure of its reward.
The business of the institute in the future was not to rest satisfied with
the proposition of Mr. Chamberlain, but to lead him or his successors
forward by logical and legitimate means toward the necessary corollary of
that proposition. If inventors were indeed the creators of trade, then the
President of the Board of Trade was bound to see, not only that they were
not prevented from creating trade, but that they received every facility
in performing their work. Hence all exertions should be used to convince
the Chancellor of the Exchequer that a less tax may produce a greater
income: to persuade the legal authorities that this description of
property, of all others, most deserves the protection of the law.
Inherited direct from the Giver of all good gifts, no person had been
dispossessed of anything he previously owned, and the wealth of humanity
might be indefinitely increased by means of it.
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