text:  Is this beneficial to inventors? Is it an encouragement of science or a proper object of legislative provision that the improver of the most trivial mechanical application should be carefully protected while those who open the hidden sources of myriads of patents are unrewarded and incapable of remunerating themselves? We seriously incline to think that as the matter at present stands an entire erasure from the statute-books of patent provision would be of service to science and perhaps to the community; each tradesman would depend for success upon his own activity and the perfection he could give his manufacture and the scientific searcher after experimental truths would not find his path barred by prohibitions from speculative empirics