We were then led to believe that an opinion
is gaining strength among the ablest men
opposed to the whole principle of patent
rights. We venture at present to express no
fixed opinion of our own, for the question is
extremely difficult, and one that is to be
decided only practically by the men whom it
directly touches. We have invented no
machines or processes ourselves, and are led
by no facts within our own experience to the
formation of a judgment. Copyrights are
wholly of another nature. Between the
copyright of a book and the patent of an
invention there exists not so much as the
bond of a remote cousinship. The author of
a book holds by his copyright exclusive
property in not one fact that he may discover.
Whatever bit of solid knowledge, or addition
to the sum of ascertained truths, he may
print for the first time, will become instantly
the whole world's property. It may be stated
again in a thousand other publications. The
only part of a book which a writer calls his
own is that which is himself, that product of
his mind which could by no possibility whatever
have arisen out of any other mind. Thus
essentially individual are the sequences of
words by which he can communicate to other
men his own emotions, the poems, tales,
histories, founded upon subjects about which
every man is at liberty to speak in his own
way, but about which it is impossible that any
one man should, without concert, write in
another man's form and order of thought, or
form of words. Upon all subjects, if any
writer should utter himself worthily in a
book, his utterance can only be his own, and
is the fruit of toil for which he can receive
payment in no other way than by the right of
owning, for a certain time at any rate, what
is more truly his property than even the
shilling in his purse, or the ring on his hand.
The case of an inventor is entirely different.
The inventor of a machine, or the discoverer
of a fact, that can be turned to profitable use
in any art or manufacture—uses intellect,
frequently, indeed, of a very high, and sometimes
of the highest order—but he uses it to obtain
something external to himself, a fact that
might have become known independently to
others. Often he is led by the advance of
human knowledge to a fact that would so
become known without much delay.
Improvements are suggested in each art or
manufacture as it grows; they are steps of
progress, and we are not quite sure that
the first man who climbs a step should hold it
for a number of years as his own; we are not
sure whether it is just that he should compel
all who come afterwards to pay their footing, or
remain below, unless they can march on by
taking two steps at a stride, and so mount
without trespassing upon the ground tabooed
or patented. Does this tabooing principle
encourage men to hurry upward? Is it found
practically to reward inventors, and to stimute
invention? We confess that upon these
points we entertain some doubt. The clumsy
nature of our English law is very much in
fault, but we are disposed to think that this
alone will not account for the great
prevalence of loss and disappointment among
patentees. A man who is so quick-witted
and energetic, who is so good an athlete that
he is able to work on before his neighbours, and
to mount to a new step upon a profitable path
before they have attempted it, is hardly, we
think, the man to need protection. Such a
man left to his own exertions will stir
onward and grow rich. Taboo a piece of ground
for him, fix him for fourteen or a score of
years to the work of establishing his footing
on the basis of some one discovery, and
pushing down all the invaders who climb up
illegally to share his privilege, we are not
quite sure whether in that case it is not in
the very nature of things likely that he will
grow poor. Dozens of patentees are rich, but
thousands drag their lives through poverty
and heartache: would the proportion be
reversed if men who thought out truths could
never patent them? We are not quite sure
whether patentees are not a little like men
self-doomed to the keeping of turnpikes on
the highway, and whether patents through
which fortunes always ought to come but
generally go do not act as impediments not,
only to the forward progress of their holders,
but to the whole onward movement of
society.

         "Not fortune's slave is man: our state
           Enjoins, while firm resolves await
          On wishes just and wise,
          That strenuous action follow both,
          And life be one perpetual growth
          Of heavenward enterprise."

The lives of most inventors are lives of
perpetual growth, until the possession of a
patent stops further movement; but Mr.
Heath's case was exceptional. His life was
one of strenuous action. Despite the patents
he had already taken out, he went on
experimenting and discovering to the end. In 1849
he obtained his last patent, which has been
described as the flower and outcome of his
metallurgical experience of thirty-five years.
Still it is not impossible that he would have
accomplished even greater benefits for his
country, if there had been no delusive
protection. What the protection of his patent did
for his successors this narrative will now
proceed to tell.

On the eleventh of May last year the whole
cause (carried on by Mr. Heath's widow)
was argued afresh, in the Exchequer Chamber,
before six judges in conclave. Four of
them decided in favour of Heath's claims,
two for the defendant. The decision was therefore
for the plaintiff. As we have said, the
improved method of carrying out the object of
the patent was taught by Mr. Heath himself to
the infringers; they had not even the merit of
establishing the fact of prior use on which