The Sun.
London, England, 1865-02-04 00:00:00

THE THAMES EMBANKMENT.

The Thames Embankment Committee reported
that this undertaking was now proceedingvery satis-
factorily, with the exception that the supply of
granite was not equal to the demand, and recom-
mended that the committee should have power to
make arrangements for the better supply of this
material.

The report was approved.
THE WESTMINSTER ACCIDENT.

The Superintending Architect reported upon the
Roman Catholic 'Free Schools, in which the terrible
accident last week happened. He stated that the
building was 70 feet long by 20 wide; with an upper
story constructed with timber girders 13 inches by
121, bedded 9 inches at each end in an 18-inch wall,
and spanning 20 feet, and in which joints of 2f were
tennoned. The floor from the north to the south
was divided into seven bays by six similar girders.
On the day of the accident a platform was erected
at the extreme north end of the upper room for the
purpose of drawing a lottery, and the rest of the floor
was crowded with spectators—between, it was said,
400 and 500. No doubt the part nearest the platform
was the most crowded, and this was the portion which
gave way, over an area of 400 superficial feet, and,
supposing there were 120 persons on that space, with
a weight of 71 tons. The report then went on to
say that wooden girders of the thickness of those
in the building ought to take a pressure
of 40 tons before breaking, whereas this one had
broken with a weight of about four tons, part of the
weight being on the other girders. He thought the
wood was American pine, a wood which should only
be used for joiner's work. If the best Baltic timber
had been used, as it ought to have been, a pressure
of 20 tons could have been put on without danger.
The report was referred to the Building Act Com-
mittee, and after the disposal of other business the
Board adjourned,

smir OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

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TIMES.—The argument in the case of " Feather
v. The Queen," and the elaborate judgment which
the Court of Queen's Bench yesterday delivered
may fairly be regarded as the coup de grace of the
Patent Law. The successful argument to which the
Attorney-General lent the weight of his authority
can only be taken as an expression of opinion on
the part of the first law officer of the Crown and the
head of the English Bar, that our Law of Patents
ought to be immediately abolished as a hindrance
to the development of national wealth and an ob-
stacle to the progress of improvement of our manu-
factures. It is true that no such opinion can be
found explicitly stated in the speech of Sir Roundell
Palmer before the Judges at Westminster; but it
is impossible to suppose that he would use the argu-
ment which has proved so successful if he were not
convinced that the Patent Law ought to be re-
moved from our Statute-book. Mr. Feather is the
patentee of an invention for making ships impreg-
nable by constructing them partly of iron and partly
of wood ; and it was assumed as a basis of argu-
ment, and may now be taken for granted, that his
invention was at once novel and useful. Such being
the case, he complained that the Lords of the Ad-
miralty, in the construction of the Enterprise, had
pirated his invention, and he filed a Petition of
Right for redress of his grievance. We may at
once dismiss the answer that he had taken the
wrong method for asserting his claims. At best,
this would be only 'a dilatory plea, and, in fact, the
judgment yesterday given was against Mr. Feather
on the merits of his claim, and would have been the
same whatever form of procedure he had followed.
On the merits of the case the Attorney-General
advanced two novel and highly ingenious reasons
why Mr. Feather should not succeed in his action.
The first was•that, allowing patents in general to
bind the Crown, and to debar it from using the
inventions specified in them without the consent
of the respective patentees, yet this particular
patent referred to an invention which concerned
the defence of the realm, and the Crown under
its prerogative was justified in disregarding it.
It is conceded that the exclusive use of an
invention is a proper subject of proprietary
rights, and the argument, therefore, amounts to
this, that the rights of ownership of private
persons must, without any satisfaction by way of
compensation, give way to the necessities of the State.
No distinction can be drawn on this part of the case
between the exclusive right to occupy a field and the
exclusive right to work an invention, and the Attor-
ney-General did indeed, in support of his position,
cite the authority of Coke, that the Crown might
seize for the purposes of defence all the saltpetre in
the realm. The Court of Queen's Bench were dis-
posed to pay very little attention to an argument
which rested on no well-considered authority, and
which, if sound, made such an Act as the recent
Defence Act unnecessary and wasteful. That Act
empowered the Secretary-at-War to compel the
sale of certain plots of ground along the coast to
serve as sites of fortifications ; but if the Attorney-
General were correct, the Crown—without any con-
sideration or any formality of sale—might have en-
tered and seized upon these lands for such a pur-
pose, in virtue of its prerogative. It is, of course,
possible that the Act was a blunder, but its machinery
serves to answer the sole reason advanced by Sir
Roundell Palmer in support of this branch of his
argument. He is reported to have said that unless
the Crown could appropriate to its use inventions of
service in war, they might be communicated to our
enemies and kept back from our own Government.
No such consequence necessarily follows. The prin-
ciple embodied in the Defence Act and in every Rail-
way Act refutes it. Whenever the public service re-
quires a private owner to sell his property to the State,
the Legislature can properly intervene to compel him
to sell it at the valuation of his neighbours, and
there is no necessity why it should be taken in any
other way. Had Mr. Feather's claim been impeached
on the simple ground that his invention concerned
the defence of the realm, the answer could not have
been admitted. The second argument of Sir Roun-
dell Palmer against Mr. Feather's claim was irresis-
tible. He denied that the Crown was bound by its
Letters Patent. It could scarcely be asserted that
letters patent, such as those granted by Queen Eliza-
beth to Sir Walter Raleigh for the importation of
sweet wines, were anything more than privileges
conferred by the Sovereign on one subject, in dero-
gation of the rights of other subjects, and of them
alone ; but it would probably be a mistake to con-
fuse such grants with the Patents conceded since
the Statute of Monopolies. This statute is, in fact,
the Magna Charta of the rights of the people against
patentees. The Commons, in the reign of James 1.,
clamoured against the profuse grants of monopolies,
and at length obtained the Act in question for their
own protection. It recites the great grievance and
inconvenience suffered- by his Majesty's subjects,