others; this was the more necessary in times
when very few persons could read or write.
Merchants' marks were in use at Sheffield long
before the granting of the charter under which
the cutlers' and steel workers' privileges have
ever since been defined and protected in that
busy town. A jury of cutlers was empannelled
to assign marks to the different manufacturers
whereby to distinguish their respective productions.
Merchants' marks were regularly used
on the Continent to a much later period than
in this country; even now they are employed
by the great firms of Oporto and Lisbon, to
give authenticity to casks and pipes of wine;
and what is called the brand of the best cigars
is a merchant's mark stamped or branded on
the box.

The law rightly recognises a commercial value
as attached to marks, brands, stamps, or symbols
such as these. But although the law gives this
recognition, the defining of its limits is often very
puzzling. A trade mark properly so called, a
good will, a title, a style, a designation, the
labels of a house of business, a particular
wrapper, all have special value to the proper
owner; but the law leaves judge and jury
sometimes rather at a loss. It is, however,
certain, that any mark by which a manufacturer
identifies himself with any product creditable
to his skill and enterprise, is morally in the
nature of property, and ought to be protected.

Some curious cases are on record, illustrating
this matter. There is a patent medicine
which we are all invited to purchase
as a remedy for every ill that flesh is heir to;
the two partners who manufactured it separated,
and the law had to determine which of them, or
whether both, possessed the right of making
the health-giving pills, and of calling them by
the name of Universal Medicine. A person
who was not Schweppe, sold soda-water in
bottles which had Schweppe's name stamped on
them; he had bought the bottles second-hand,
and was let off on condition that he would not do
so any more. A publisher announced a work by
William Grainger, Esq.; another publisher did
the same, and defied the first to prove that a person
of that name had written the book; it was
admitted that there was no such person, and the
action failed; there was a seller of Howqua's
Mixture, a tea professing to be grown and mixed in
China expressly for this one person; an
injunction could not be obtained against a rival
who made use of the same title, because it was
found that the tea was ordinary tea, mixed up in
England in the usual way. The same fate
attended an application for an injunction to
prevent a person from using the title Medicated
Mexican Balm for a medicine made from a
recipe prepared by the celebrated Blumenbach;
but the Blumenbach theory was found to be all
a sham. Somebody's Patent Kitchener was
pirated; but the law refused to protect the
aggrieved person, because the invention had not
been patented, and the title therefore involved
a falsehood. Two parties made a fortune by
selling an inestimable composition for blacking
our boots; two other persons of the same
names set up in the same trade; on trial it was
found that the law would permit them so to do,
seeing that the names were really correct,
provided the alleged offenders did not imitate too
closely the labels of the original firm.

A few more examples. A medicine-vendor and
a physician had a joint interest in certain
powders and pills, which proved a mine of wealth to
both of them; a descendant of the one quarrelled
with a descendant of the other about the right
of using the secret recipe; but as the recipe was
not revealed in court, the law refused to decide
in the dark. An assistant surreptitiously
obtained, in contravention of his indenture of
apprenticeship, a knowledge of a secret recipe
possessed by his master; he made the article,
and sold it in packets like the original, a
proceeding which brought a prompt injunction.
Lord Byron once obtained an injunction against
a publisher for announcing Poems by Lord
Byron; the publisher would not swear to his
belief that the poems were really written by his
lordship; and of course he was pronounced to
be in the wrong. One iron-merchant stamped
another iron-merchant's mark on some bars
intended for the Turkish market; but he was soon
stopped in this. A publisher brought out a
Catalogue of Etchings by the Queen and the
Prince Consort, with descriptions; the details
had been obtained surreptitiously, and yet the
publication was announced to be by permission
of the royal personages; of course the law soon
put a stop to this piece of knavery. Two men of
the same name made shot-belts and powder-
flasks; the less known of the two profited by
this, in what shopkeepers call an "untradesmanlike
manner;" but he did not overshoot the
boundary of the law. One omnibus proprietor
was prohibited by injunction from running an
omnibus bearing names and designations similar
to those previously employed by another. A
carrier's business was sold in two parts to two
purchasers; each claimed to use the original
owner's name, and the law had to decide between
them. The printer of a Bath newspaper left his
property in trust for the widow and children;
the widow allowed the foreman, who was a
favourite of hers, to use the office and the type
for printing a rival paper; but this was
pronounced to be a wrong to the children. Labels
concerning certain Vegetable Pills, exactly like
those of the original pills which had obtained
a large sale (except in the insertion of small
type here and there), were pronounced to be too
close an imitation to be allowable.

These are some of the many indications which
the law books afford of the recognition of trade
marks as private property, and of the difficulty
often experienced in determining whether the
right has been infringed or not. Five years ago,
a Merchandise Marks Act was passed, to
protect any "mark, name, word, signature, letter,
number, figure, or sign," used to denote any
particular article made specially by one firm or
person. And in like manner vessels, cases,
wrappers, boxes, tickets, bands, reels, labels,