to show that I do not desire to see the ground cumbered with useless inventions which trip up ordinary wayfarers in the field of industry. But I think that it is no improvement of patent law to contruct a system which has a tendency to repress invention among the poor, and only to stimulate it among the rich. Nevertheless, the bill certainly offers new and important advantages to the inventor, for it lengthens by nine months the period of preliminary protection before the final specification is made; it cheapens patents in the early stages, and it extends proved patents from fourteen to twentyone years. Against these advantages are the disadvantages. First, the bill complicates procedure, and it enforces examination as to subject-matter and novelty by a machinery which must inevitably prove incompetent. Both these blots may be considered together. There are, as we have shown, two interests to protect-the interests of the inventor and of the public. In the case of a good patent these interests are identical, but in a useless patent they are antagonistic. When the public travel along a road, it is useful to have steps cut to shorten a hill or to escape an obstacle; but it is positively pernicious to find the road strewn with lumbering obstacles, which trip up the traveller and cause unnecessary hindrance to his progress. The previous examination of patents for novelty and utility is intended to prevent these hindrances, and has been recommended by a Royal Commission, by a Select Committee, and by the International Congress of Vienna. The weight of authority is therefore strongly in its favour. But examination may be conducted in a spirit hostile to the inventor, as is done in Prussia, or in a spirit of instruction and friendliness, as in America. There are to be six examiners under the new bill; in America there used to be a hundred, and now there are eighty-five! It is quite impossible that six examiners can cover the field of a thorough investigation of 5,000 patents yearly. The results of their examination if hostile, after a reference to the law officers and appeal to the Chancellor, are to be final; and the expense of this procedure, with the certainty that six men cannot bring the knowledge of experts to bear upon inventions, will much discourage the poor class of inventors. According to the bill the examiners are to act in rotation, and the result of this would be that the man versed in clocks might have to decide on a chemical patent, and the refuser of a patent this week might be the passer of a like patent in the following week. The examiners should consist of a sufficient number of experts on each subject, paid for each report, and not of a few men professing universal knowledge, which, in the present state of science, it is impossible for them to possess. If the experts be lawyers they cannot be mechanicians and chemists, and if they be the latter they cannot be good lawyers. A responsible and properly paid Commission of Patents could easily obtain the know

ledge of experts by an adequate remuneration. The inadequate provisions of the bill as to examination have led to the suggestion that, if it were not prohibitory but instructional, the poor inventor would gladly receive the knowledge and advice of the examiners to guide him in coming to a decision as to novelty and utility. It is contended that an examination of the authorities cited to prove that his invention was neither novel nor useful, would in nine cases out of ten induce the inventor to withdraw his proposal, with a grateful feeling to the State for having saved him from further expense. If he still persisted in carrying his patent to completion, the unfavourable opinion of the examiners should be recorded on the patent, and would be strong evidence against him in future proceedings. It would only be in case of a strong conviction of originality that a patentee would go forward in the case of a hostile record. And we know of important cases where actual prohibition has acted injuriously. Bessemer's process for blowing air into molten iron and Giffard's injector were refused in Prussia on the ground of want of novelty, and yet have proved vastly important inventions. The enrolment of a patent, after all, can scarcely be called in a strict sense a secure monopoly, but is only a presumptive right of property, for the State does not defend it or give any special privileges for its protection. Still, it would be illogical to grant a presumptive monopoly when you record upon the register that the claim is neither one of novelty nor of utility. It is true that if a few bad patents did get on the register through the pertinacity of obstinate men, the rising scale of fees would soon cause them to disappear if useless. Even now the average life of a patent is said to be only 33 years; and, with a little adjustment of the proposed scale of fees, bad and useless patents would soon disappear from the record. There is a good deal of plausibility in this reasoning, but it is not conclusive. The new law is much in favour of the inventor, who ought in return to give fair concessions to public interests. The weight of all authority supports a system of preliminary examination which, to be of any public use, ought to be conclusive. But both the public and the inventor have a right to demand an adequate tribunal in the first instance, so that they may trust its competency and fairness. This the bill does not provide, though it may be modified to meet this want. The patent revenue ought, moreover, to be used not merely to swell the Consolidated Fund, but to promote invention. It now amounts to about 90,000l. per annum, and is little applied to the public advantage. Patent libraries to consult, and patent museums of an efficient kind, not only in London but in our chief industrial towns, to show preceding inventions, ought to be provided, if invention is to be stimulated and not strangled by new patent laws. A museum and library, indeed, exist in London, but on a

scale little commensurate with their importance, and are miserably inferior to the museums of industrial inventions in France and America.

The new Patent Bill, while it provides for the extension of new patents from fourteen to twenty-one years, strangely omits to make provisions for the extension of existing patents for a further period of seven years. This would be clearly necessary when they are brought under the same conditions as to license and payment as those under the new bill. It would be a singular injustice that good and effective patents now in existence should have a term of life one-third shorter than the more fortunate ones taken out after the present year. On the whole, it will be seen that the bill before Parliament is founded on good conceptions of public interest, and requires only certain modifications to render it a valuable measure. It adopts the right principle that patents should not be considered in relation to any indefeasible right which the inventor possesses; for the State has no immediate interest in the individual patentee, but it has an interest in the public, and it is only when these interests are common that the State ought to give privileges to the former.

I have made no allusion to the views of those who think that patents should not be given at all, but that the State should recompense inventors by honours and pecuniary rewards. The experience of State rewards for inventions is melancholy in the extreme. It is true that there are a few instances in which such a man as Crompton, the inventor of the spinning mule, got 5,000l. as a wholly insufficient recompense when some five or six millions of spindles were enriching the country; but there are other records of large over-payments for the most trivial and useless inventions. Take, for instance, another reward of 5,000l., given to Mr. Steven, in 1739, on the recommendation of a Royal Commission, consisting of an archbishop, ten bishops, the Lord Chancellor, three Secretaries of State, five peers, and ten men of science. The reward was for a remedy to cure gravel, and the remedy proved to consist of three items-a powder, a pill, and a decoction. The powder was made of pounded egg-shells and snailshells; the pill of egg-shells, soap, and honey; the decoction of soap and swines cresses.' The Government is an unfit tribunal to assess public rewards, which never could be so efficient as the results of commercial success. As to paying in honours, the time is past when that would be accepted as a discharge for public work in relation to industry or science. The State has unwisely limited these honours to combatant and more lately to civil services, while the victors of peaceful struggles in science and industry have lost their appreciation of them. At one time the sovereign was the fountain of honour to all, and three letters of the alphabet, with a few inches or a yard or two of riband, was taken as payment in full for much

service rendered to the State. But by the exclusive policy of the Government, in denying honours to scientific and industrial achievements, the fountain of honour which used to spring from the throne has become dried up, and both discoverers and inventors have learned to prefer the democratic letters F.R.S.' to the more royal letters K.C.B.'

6

LYON PLAYFAIR.

SHAKSPEARIAN NOTES.

No. 1.

THE THIRD MURDERER IN 'MACBETH.'

THERE have been various theories and much discussion among students of Shakspeare as to the Third Murderer in Macbeth. It has even been maintained that Macbeth himself was the man, and that only upon this assumption can the difficulties attending the character be solved. Anyone curious to follow out that suggestion will find it discussed in Notes and Queries for September 11 and November 13, 1869.

A theory on this subject has struck me, which has not, so far as I am aware, been hitherto advanced.

The stage directions in Macbeth concerning one particular character (who, curiously enough, is not mentioned in the dramatis persona of any edition which I bear in mind) are minute, and I believe that, where such directions are so particularly given by Shakspeare, they are for a purpose, because he is generally careless about those matters, and leaves them, as it were, for the actors to carry out.

This character is described simply as an Attendant,' and what I wish to contend is that this 'Attendant' is the Third Murderer.

My reasons are as follows:-Macbeth utters what little he does say to this attendant in a tone of marked contempt-strangely suggestive, to my mind, of his being some wretched creature who was entirely in Macbeth's power-not an ordinary servant, but one whom he might use as a tool, and who had no courage to disobey or withstand him.

Supposing this to have been the case, such a servant (from whatever causes), in such a state of moral bondage to his master, would be just the man employed upon the work of watching without the palace gate' for the two murderers whose services he had, by Macbeth's orders, secured.

He need not have known the precise object of their interview with Macbeth, and I think it was probable, from the action of the scene, that he was not told of it until after Macbeth's conversation (act iii. sc. 1) with the two murderers, at the conclusion of which, I infer, he was commanded to watch them.

Now the stage direction in act iii. sc. 1 is: Exeunt all but