He had said that the concessions granted were almost infinitesimal, yet a result had been obtained, surprisingly confirmatory of the views always advocated by the institute as to the potentiality of the inventive talent of this nation were it released from its shackles.  While in former years the highest number of patents taken out had slowly risen to the number of five to six thousand per annum, in the year now expiring it had bounded to more than three times five thousand—­had at one leap reached an equality with the patents of the United States, where only L4 ($20) was paid for a patent for seventeen years, instead of L175, as in Great Britain, for a term of fourteen years.  If in the future we could hope to persuade the legislators to be content with no heavier tax than in the United States had yielded a heavy surplus over expenses of a well-conducted Patent Office, he did not fear to assert that the number of patents taken out in this country would again be trebled, and that trade and industry would be correspondingly animated and developed.  The result of the wiser patent law of the United States had been to flood our markets with well-manufactured yet cheap articles from that country which might have been equally well made by our artisans at home had invention not been subject to such heavy restrictions, and had technical skill been equally sure of its reward.

The business of the institute in the future was not to rest satisfied with the proposition of Mr. Chamberlain, but to lead him or his successors forward by logical and legitimate means toward the necessary corollary of that proposition.  If inventors were indeed the creators of trade, then the President of the Board of Trade was bound to see, not only that they were not prevented from creating trade, but that they received every facility in performing their work.  Hence all exertions should be used to convince the Chancellor of the Exchequer that a less tax may produce a greater income:  to persuade the legal authorities that this description of property, of all others, most deserves the protection of the law.  Inherited direct from the Giver of all good gifts, no person had been dispossessed of anything he previously owned, and the wealth of humanity might be indefinitely increased by means of it.  Not many mighty, not many noble, received this gift, but it was the inexhaustible heritage of the humble, it was the rich reward of the intelligent of all races that peopled the earth.  To whomsoever given, this gift was intended to contribute to the health and the wealth of the human race, for the bringing into existence new products, for their utilization for the encouragement of the general intelligence of the nations, and for the lightening of the burdens of the poor.  It would also cause technical education to be more highly valued as a means to an end—­for true inventive genius was never so likely to succeed as when it passed from the summit of the known to the confines of the possible, when, having learnt and appreciated what predecessors had accomplished, it went earnestly to work to solve the next problem, to remove the next obstacle on the path which to them had proved insurmountable.