INVENTORS IN ENGLAND.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4376, 30 March 1875, Page 2

INVENTORS IN ENGLAND.

(By “ CEdipus,” in the Melbourne Leader.) In marked contrast to the liberality of the King of Siam, the Government of England has just been guilty of an act of extreme shabbiness. The Patent Office is a perfect warren of highly-paid lawyers, and complaints having been made of the absence of all scientific supervision, tbe Lord Chancellor and the Master of the. Bolls intimated that they would recommend the appointment of three Commissioners of Patent to act with them, one to represent mechanical science, the second chemistry, and the third natural philosophy, “ But,” said the Crown lawyers, “we are not prepared to recommend that any salary should be attached to the services of these gentlemen. We trust and believe that gentlemen fully competent may be found who have sufficient leisure, and who, from their love of science, would be willing to give their services without the remuneration, and to superintend the general management of the Patent Office, to see that the indexes and abstracts of the specifications arc made accurate and complete, and to redress defects, acting in all these respects in conjunction with the Lord Chancellor and the Master of the Bolls, to whom they would refer whenever the occasion would require it,” In plain English, the three scientific commissioners are to do all the hard work and drudgery, and the lawyers take all the pay and credit. It is a fact that the legal commissioners, two of whom are paid between £SOOO and £SOOO a year out of the fees, have not attended a single meeting during the last six years, while the surplus income of the office is about £90,000 per annum. The poor inventors are robbed, and then* scientific friends are invited to work for nothing. The shabbiness of the proposal is only excelled by the impudence of the ainecurists who made it. Hid any one ever hear of a lawyer working at the law for the love of it ? The contrast between the Lord Chancellor and the King of Siam is enough to raise doubts of the wisdom of Tennyson in preferring “half an hour of Europe to a cycle of Cathay.”