6 her, is now inevitably on the wane. In the next place, if timidity, if rashness, if intolerance have found a voice and rushed (as was very natural for them to do) into overhasty anathemas, the voice of reason, of strong and therefore tranquil faith, and of determination to buy the pearl of truth whatever it may cost, has not (be it well remembered) yet been heard. Dr. Manning, not long ago, shuddered to record his unchanging conviction that Dr. Colenso represents the religion of the majority of English laymen.'* Making allowance for the exaggerations of a renegade and an Ultramontane, we may perhaps reduce this statement to the prognostication that whenever the proper time shall come, and all the knotty debates on precedent and order that amuse and agitate Convocation shall be set at rest, then the mighty voice of the now quiescent English Church (in the full extent claimed for it by the Bishop of St. David's †) shall be heard above the babbling din,-then it will be known on which side the great mass of English churchmen were really standing, and whether the policy pursued by the present leaders was a policy suited to their sense of Right and Truth or not. If we are not mistaken, the principles upon which Theology will in the future be conducted are, not the principles of Dr. Pusey or Professor Mansel or Dr. Wordsworth, but the principles of Professor Jowett and Dean Stanley, of Dr. Döllinger and M. Guizot,—and of a greater far than any of these, who thus draws to a close the noblest of his works:- It seems, then, that man has a con'sanguinity with God; and since God knoweth all things, and nothing even of the supersensual world is hidden from Him, surely even the rational mind may grow from less to more, from the visible to the invisible, and come at last to a more 'perfect kind of knowledge.' And again, if we do not utterly misread the signs of the times, the Policy that will ere long receive the sanction of the English Church is not the policy of an insincere Evangelico-Tractarian Alliance, nor the policy of employing mean and vexatious persecutions productive of immeasurable scandals, without even the paltry merit of success, but that policy, which has always been supported in this Journal, which has now, after mature consideration, been formally recommended to the State by the recent admirable Report of the Committee on Clerical Subscription, and which has lately found its spokesmen in some of the ablest prelates on the bench: : *The Crown in Council on Essays and Reviews, p. 20. Origen, De Principiis, iv. 37. 'It is not (writes Archbishop Thomson) to be thought that our teachers have up to this time been kept straight by the fear of a tribunal which in fact we have never used. If one of us should be tempted to err from the Faith, more powerful than such a fear will be the common sense of his people, who, with the Bible in their hands and the Prayerbook that recognises the Bible, will refuse to be led off from its plain statements; more powerful will be the voice of his own conscience, that tells him what he has freely undertaken to teach, and how far he may depart from it without ceasing to be a teacher in a Church that is founded on the Bible. The Church of England knows little of courts and prosecutions, and her stability and soundness in the Faith rest upon a different and a far surer guarantee.'* I deprecate (says Bishop Jeune) any indirect mode of laying down doctrine by any tribunal whatsoever. I do not, however, think that the Church of England depends much upon any tribunal. It is a Church of confidence on the one side and of honour on the other. To this we have chiefly trusted in the past, and to it I think we may in the main trust for many years to come. I hope, therefore, we shall see few of these disastrous trials.' † In this hope we are sure that every loyal son of the Church of England must heartily concur. No less than 1,400 years ago, Augustine laid down the same broad principle: 'melius 'est dubitare de rebus occultis, quàm litigare de incertis.' ‡ And although every candid Churchman must fully allow, and deeply sympathise with, the practical difficulties of prelates, whose very office compels them to exercise an anxious watchfulness over doctrine,-still, it must never be forgotten that this same high office demands from them generalship rather than petty tactics, and a certain healthfulness of conscience, far removed from morbid scruples or womanish fears. The Bishop of Salisbury himself allows that the urgent need of the Church is that intellectual or scientific exhibition of Divine truth, of which it is really capable.'§ And even the Bishop of Capetown confesses that the results of Dr. Colenso's writings have actually been, that they who are best able and most disposed to form an impartial conclusion on the matter, tell us that, so 'far from being shaken in their convictions. . . discussion and 'controversy have deepened and strengthened their convictions.' I With regard therefore to the practical question now more immediately under debate, we echo the following * Pastoral, 1864, p. 16. † Speech in Convocation, Feb. 17, 1865. § Charge, 1864, p. 24. VOL. CXXI. NO. CCXLVIII. On Genesis viii. 5. PP wise and moderate language, which well becomes the statesmanlike dignity of their episcopal throne: The Church of England is the great defence of pure Christianity. To it is committed the most important post in the whole world, in maintaining the ancient faith and yet meeting the evervarying wants of man's growing intelligence. Let us trust that, whatever changes are introduced into its polity, nothing may ever be done to make it more dependent on the temporary agitations of Theological parties.'* 'Patience is the proper temper for an age like our own, which is in many ways an age of transition. The discoveries of Galileo seemed more alarming to his contemporaries than any discoveries in geology or statistics can seem to us. We see no difficulty in Galileo's discoveries now. Such things, then, are probably the proper trials of our faith. Sober views, patience, prayer, a life of godliness, and a good conscience will (no doubt) keep us from making shipwreck of faith. What now seems like a shadow may be only the proof that there is a light behind it. And even if at times there should come shadows seeming like deep night, we may hope that the dawn of the morning is but the nearer.'† ART. X.-1. Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Working of the Law relating to Letters Patent for Inventions. (Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. 1865.) 2. Rapports des Membres de la Section Française sur l'Ensemble de l'Exposition. Publiés sous la Direction de M. MICHEL CHEVALIER. 1862. 6 6 THE grievance of monopolies had gone on continually in'creasing; scarce any article was exempt from these oppressive patents. When the list of them was read over in the 'House, a member exclaimed, " Is not bread among the number?" The House seemed amazed. "Nay," said he, "if no re"medy is found for these, bread will be there before the next "Parliament." Every tongue seemed now unloosed; each ' as if emulously descanting on the injuries of the place he re'presented.' So Hallam describes the indignation of British senators, two centuries and a half ago, at the extent to which the ordinary business of trade and manufacture had passed under the dominion of individual monopolists holding 6 * Bp. Tait, Collection of Judgments,' &c., Preface, sub fin. † Bp. Browne, 'Aids to Faith,' p. 321. letters patent from the Crown. But if the list of such monopolies were now read over in the House, it would be found that the case of which the mere imagination once provoked such wrath in Parliament has been realised,-bread is among their number, and a man shall hardly mix flour and water and bake them into bread in any manner which has not been granted by the Crown to the exclusive use of some patentee. Bread, of course, is but an example. In 1851, before the reduction of the cost of patents, and when fresh monopolies were granted only by hundreds a year, Mr. Brunel described to the Select Committee of the House of Lords on Patent Bills the effect of the restrictions upon improvements in manufacture as follows:- At present I dare not take a step in introducing any change in the manufacture of anything, because I am pounced down by some one who has patented something that resembles it.' Since 1852 fresh patents have been issued, not by hundreds but by thousands; more than 35,000 specifications have been lodged in the Patent Office since that year; and, while the increasing competition of other countries makes it more than ever necessary that every man should be free to make any improvement that science or experience may suggest, it has even become dangerous to a manufacturer to continue manufacturing by his own ordinary methods. Mr. John Scott Russell stated to the Royal Commission, which has at length issued its report:- I have gone on in the course of my business, doing my ordinary work, and I have found other people taking out patents for what I was doing without calling it an invention, and then prosecuting me for my own inventions.' Mr. John Platt, a large manufacturer in Oldham, said :— 'It is positively dangerous for a person engaged in business in a large way as I am, considering the number of patents that are granted so indiscriminately, to carry on business at all. I think that there is scarcely a week, certainly not a month, that passes but what we have a notice of some kind or other of things that we have never heard of, and do not in the least know that we are infringing upon them, and the difficulty is to get any knowledge; we may be now infringing, and may have been infringing for years, and a person may have been watching us all the time, and when he thinks we may have made a sufficient number, he may come down upon us.' And Mr. Grove, Q.C., a member of the Commission and distinguished patent lawyer, observed: In a large manufacturing concern where there are many looms or many mules employed, the ordinary little improvements which probably any skilful workman could adopt from day to day as he went on, he is now prohibited from making; that is to say, he runs ་ the risk in each of them, however trifling it may be, of infringing some patent.'* Again, on behalf of the Admiralty, the Duke of Somerset testified: It is almost impossible to move anywhere without being told that we are interfering with the patent right of some gentleman, and the inconvenience to the department of course is enormous in the time it takes up.' Admiral Robinson, Comptroller of the Navy, added: It is scarcely 'possible to build a ship, being a combination of wood and iron-and you always have some of each in a ship-without treading upon somebody's patent.' The Ordnance Select Committee likewise report that-It is scarcely possible to propose a new arrangement of breech-loading or new mode of rifling or new description of projectile which shall avoid known defects and embrace known excellences, without finding some ' of the details anticipated by patentees and claimed as private ' property.' It is true that even among some of the heaviest sufferers by the multiplicity of patents there is a disposition to believe that these mischievous consequences are remediable by alterations in the administration of the Patent Law; but it is impossible satisfactorily to discuss the remedies which have been suggested without examining the fundamental assumptions upon which the policy of maintaining a law of patents, without reference to its special provisions, has been rested by its most eminent advocates. Paradoxical as it may be, the inherent and incurable vices of the Patent Law are its chief stronghold. It is of necessity so technical in its principles, so full of subtle, contradictory, and unjust distinctions, so unintelligible without laborious study, that few but practising patent lawyers have ever attempted to master it. Even great political philosophers have spared themselves the labour of investigating its real character, and treading the high priori road,' have founded their arguments for it not upon its actual and essential principles, but upon what they have erroneously imagined them to be. Bentham termed the chief vice in a system of law incognoscibility,' but the incognoscibility of the Law of Patents, which has ruined so many inventors, can alone have secured for it Bentham's approval upon wholly mistaken grounds. The popularity of the Patent Law grew out of various assumptions which are altogether fallacious. It was assumed that patents must reward inventors in proportion to the useful |