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.

More beneficial than any other change whatever in our legislation would be a full and cordial recognition, a complete and efficient protection, of property created by thought. Then the humblest individual in the land might have confidence that he could call into existence property not inferior in value to that of the richest landowner, the most successful merchant, or the most wealthy manufacturer, in the whole world. As an instance of this Admiral Selwyn mentioned two prominent cases arising out of the pursuit of two widely differing branches of knowledge, in the one case by an outsider, in the other by a specialist. He referred to Sir H. Bessemer, one of his valued colleagues in the vice-presidency of the institute, and Mr. Perkins, the discoverer of aniline dyes. In each of these instances, whatever might have been the results to the inventors, and he hoped they had been satisfactory, a sum which might be estimated at twenty millions sterling annually, constantly on the increase, and never before existing, had been added to the income-tax-paying wealth of the country.

With such a result arising from the development of only two inventions, he thought it would be seen that he must be a most ignorant, foolish, or obstinate Chancellor of the Exchequer who would refuse to allow such property to be created by requiring heavy preliminary payments, or in any way discourage or fail to encourage to the utmost of his power the creation of property which was capable of producing such a result - a result which he would in vain seek for did he rely on landed property alone, since this, in the hands of whomsoever it might be, never could largely increase in extent, and was subject at this moment to serious depreciation in tax-paying power.

The exertion of intelligence, combined with a sense of security in its pecuniary results, was in itself opposed to loose notions of proprietary rights, and tended to diminish that coveting of neighbors' goods which was the fertile source of vice and crime, and which was capable of breaking down the strongest and most wealthy community if indulged, till at last society was resolved into its elements, and when nothing else was left as property, man, the savage, coveted the scalp of his fellow man, and triumphed over a lock of hair torn from his bleeding skull.

Invention was an ennobling pursuit, and was, even among those who were not also handworkers, a means of employment which never left dull or idle hours, while to the handworker it meant more, for it offered the most ready means of rising among his fellows, and, where invention received proper protection, of securing a competence for old age or ill health. Not only, as he had before said, did the results of invention cause no loss to any other individual, unless by displacing inferior methods of working, but in most instances some distinct benefit arose to the whole human race, and unless this was the case the patented invention failed to obtain recognition, soon died out, and left the field clear for others to occupy.

He regretted that so few results had been obtained from the Patent Bill of last year, but he would briefly refer to some of the changes thought desirable by inventors and by the council of the institute.

No one could deem it desirable, it could scarcely be thought reasonable, that an Englishman who was called upon to pay in the United States £7 for a valid patent for seventeen years should be still obliged in his own country to pay £175 for a less term of a patent which does not convey anything but a right to go to law. It was also not reasonable to pretend by a deed to convey a proprietary right while reserving the power to grant compulsory licenses, which must tend to destroy the value of such proprietary right.

It was a reproach to legislative perspicacity that the grantee of a patent should be obliged to accept the view of the state, the grantor, as to the value of the invention to the nation, and also that any other method of proceeding to upset a patent, once granted, should be allowed than a suit for revocation to the crown, on the ground of error, such revocation if obtained not to prejudice the granting anew, with the old date, of a valid patent for the parts of the invention which are not proved to be anticipated at the trial. There are many other points which could not be referred to on the present occasion, but he might say that the duty of the council would be to press them forward until the capitalist could consider patented property at least as sound an investment as any other. So might the wealth of the nation be largely increased, and the sense of justice between man and man be more fully inculcated. In the United States inventors were able at once to secure the favorable attention of capitalists, because there the whole business of the Patent Office was to assist the inventor to obtain a valid - and, as far as possible, an indisputable - patent.

Even so small an article as a pair of pliers, one of the most familiar of tools, had been proved to be capable of patented improvement. Formerly these were always made to open and close at an angle which precluded their holding any object grasped by them with the desirable rigidity. A clever workman invented a means of producing this effect by the application of a parallel motion. He probably went to the office at Washington, was referred to a certain room in a certain corridor, and there found a gentleman whose business it was to know all about the patents for such tools. By his aid he eliminated from his patent all anticipatory matter, and issued from the office with a valid patent, which, developed by capital, had supplied all the trades which employ such instruments with a better means of accomplishing their work, had employed capital and labor with remunerative results in producing the pliers, and had added one more to the little things which create trade for his country.

This was a typical instance of the way in which invention was encouraged in America. Why should it be otherwise here? For many years literary property had received a protection which was yet to be desired for patented invention. Not only for fourteen years, but for the duration of a man's life, was that kind of brain property protected, and even after his death his heirs still continued to derive benefit from it. Should a romance or a poem be deemed more worthy of reward than the labors of those inventors to whom he had referred, and which certainly produced far greater and more abiding advantage to the nation? To secure a due appreciation of the whole importance of invention, no other means could be adopted than that which the institute had been formed to secure, namely, the union of inventors, not only of one nation, but of the whole world. The international character of the subject had been recognized by the institute, and they had never neglected any opportunities of pressing that view of the subject, which had at last obtained some recognition from our government.

No great result could, however, be expected from a congress where inventors, not lawyers or patent agents, still less officials trained in a vicious routine, formed the majority. It might be hoped that next year there would arise an opportunity for such a congress, and that the institute would do its best to improve the occasion. There never had been a time when England more required the creation of new industries. Our agriculturists had signally failed to hold their own in the face of unlimited competition, and the food of the nation no longer came from within. But if that were the case, then some means must be found of paying for the food imported from abroad, and this could only be done by constant improvement in manufactures, or some change by which we might sell some of our other productions at a profit if the food could not be produced but at a loss. Here invention might fitly be called to aid, but could only respond if all restrictions were removed and every facility granted.

Capital must be induced to consider that home investments are more remunerative and not less secure than any others, and this could only be done by adding to the security of the property proposed for investment. He had referred to the unlimited nature of the property created by invention, and they would infer that if properly protected there was equally no limit to the capital that could be profitably employed in developing such property. The institute did not exist solely or even mainly for the purpose of advocating the claims of inventors to consideration, either individually or collectively, but for the great object of forcing home upon the convictions of the people the fact that at the very foundation of the wealth and prosperity of every nation lies the intelligence, the skill, the honesty, and the self-denial of its sons.

If, when these were exercised, for want of wise legislation such virtues failed to secure their due reward, they sought a more genial clime, and that nation which had undervalued them sank to rise no more; or, if the error were acknowledged, and too late the course was reversed, found itself already outstripped in the race of progress, and could slowly, if ever, regain its lost position. Finally he urged the inventors of England to rally round the institution in all their strength, and thus secure the objects of which he had striven, however feebly, to point out the importance. If they did so, this institution would take a rank second to no other in the empire: and while acknowledging that the interests of the inventor must always be subordinate to the welfare of the state, he asserted that the two were inseparable, and that in no other way could the latter and principal result be so completely secured as by according a due consideration to the former.