The Sun.
London, England, 1852-05-28 00:00:00

THE SUN,

course that can be followed if the object happens to
be a lengthened and indefinite postponement. A
series of questions and answers as apparently exhaust-
ing and inexhaustible as a book of conundrums, is
indulged in by the more indefatigable Members
sitting on this Select Committee, and generally about
the tail of the session, when further progress in the
Bill (the course of which has been uninterrupted) is
altogether impracticable, a report is brought
up by the Chairman such as ultimately appears
on the table of the House in the agreeable shape of a
blue book, numbering some ten or twelve hundred
pages, and weighing somewhere about three or four
pounds some odd ounces avoirdupois. When, how-
ever, it so happens, a.; in the present instance, that
the matter under discussion is referred to
a Select Committee at a time when the country is on
the eve of witnessing a dissolution of the existing
Parliament, the hopeless abandonment of the
question implicated becomes, we conceive, still
more painfully apparent. Yet, while lament-
ing the procrastination consequent upon the
proceedings last night in the House of Commons in
reference to the Bill for Patent Law Amendment,
we would not, on any account, advocate in a
matter of such peculiar intricacy anything at all
approximating to precipitate legislation. The mea-
sure, which it is desired should be enlarged and other-
wise improved in application by the Bill read a
second time only yesterday, has been found, without
doubt, altogether inadequate to grapple with
the difficulties it was intended to dissipate.
Therefore, of course, it was only judicious
that some more energetic effort should be
made to secure the rights of inventors, and in so
doing to render the protection extended by the
Legislature in every respect cheaper and more ac-
cessible.

It was not enough that the sum required in the
purchase of a single patent, for England exclusively,
should have been reduced by the 14th and
15th Vic., c. 82, from 941. 6s. altogether, namely,
711. 1 ls. Bd. for public, and 221. 14s. 4d. for private
appropriation, to 76/. 63. in the aggregate, or
541. 19s. 21. for public, and 211. 6s. 10d. for pri-
vate appropriation. More than this was re-
quired, in the way of emendation to the old
system, from the two Houses of the Imperial Legis-
lature. The process, moreover, needed a further
diminution than that of a single stage. It was manifest
from the moment the Act of last session was
passed that it was insufficient in every respect
as a means of decreasing the expense incurred
and of abbreviating the time consumed in the process
of obtaining a patent for England alone. Consider-
able excuse, however, may be made for even this
glaring inadequacy in the measure, for it must not
be forgotten that the Bill was hurriedly compiled,
hurriedly introduced to Parliament, and hurriedly
passed through both Houses as a legislative pre-
liminary to the opening of the Great Industrial Ex-
hibition. It was intended that the enactment
should afford facilities in the way of obtaining
security to those inventors who might other-
wise dread the injuries of piracy on the dis-
play of their respective contrivances. A most
erroneous calculation assuredly—seeing that the
intended boon only reduced the stages gone through,
in the way to the final enrolment of the patent for
England, from " seven" to " six," diminishing the
sum of money expended in its purchase, es we have
already intimated by the insignificant amount of
181. sterling ! In consequence of this mistaken view
of the value of the patent law improvements of last
session, it was found necessary to introduce a Bill for
a somewhat more rational, because somewhat more
comprehensive amendment—a Bill which, after
being read a second time in the House of Commons
yesterday, was quietly interred in that receptacle of
things prematurely deceased, the respectable " tomb
of the CeruLzTs," or, what comes to the same thing,
was banded over to the mercies of a Select Committee,
which, supposing even that it be actually called into
existence, can only survive long enough to be just
aware of its own in the general Parliamentary disso-
lution. Fur the amendment of the patent laws, there-
fore, we must look, as for so many other legislative
improvements, to the fortunate candidates soon to be
returned as the newly-elected representatives.