Page 19

.Postponement of Patent Reform,                     19 
architecture arising from the use of metal and glass as building materials.
Our ancestors of Greece, Rome, France, or England, did not build in iron
and glass, and thus this ground is almost wholly unoccupied and is untram-
melled with precedent. 
There is fortunately no option as regards the use of metal and glass for
structures. Their novel union as building materials necessitates a new treat-
ment, and we have our hopes will produce a new era in architecture. Their
use offers direct and evident advantages as to lightness and strength, and
no 
public would be sufficiently absurd to neglect these for the purpose of tying
them down to any classic style. 
Here is thus offered at once a fresh field, and an untrodden path to the
architect, and there is no boldness in auguring that the public will readily
follow 
him if he direct his steps with firmness and grace.   PALLADiO Rl  arvivus.
(To be continued.) 
POSTPONEMENT OF PATENT REFORM. 
AT the last moment, the Lords rejected the Patent Bill with the Commons'
amendments; Lord Granville being unluckily absent, and neither the Lord 
Chancellor, nor Lord Minto, nor Lord Lansdowne, knowing anything about it.
Such was the mismanagement, that the Lords did not receive the Bill back
from the Commons until the last day of the session, when certainly it was
impossible to consider the alterations made. The Lords really had no option
but to postpone the Bill. When we consider that the bill was a very hotch-
potch in its administrative portions, vicious in principle, and most doubtful
in 
its working, rendered so in order to preserve the privileges of the Lord
Chan- 
cellor and his Patent Clerk, and that even the Lord Chancellor himself was
unable to explain the Bill, we really cannot regret that it should have been
lost. 
We sincerely pity the five hundred unhappy inventors who have sent 
inventions to the Crystal Palace, and who are thus doomed either to pay the
present exorbitant fees to Chaffwax and colleagues or to lose their rights;
and 
good-natured Mr. Labouchere expressed commiseration for them, but was 
helpless. At the last he did shew some energetic sympathy, and forced the
Bill through the Commons just the day before the prorogation. It was a pity
to run it so fine. 
Manufacturers and others interested must now make the best of the cir- 
cumstances, and be prepared to turn them to good account. As the Govern-
ment were so far prepared this year as to register patent rights in only
two 
offices, and reduce the stages of procedure to some four or five, possibly
next 
year, with sufficient gentle persuasion, they will be induced to advance
still 
further in the adoption of right principles, and may simplify the administration
to a single office and a single stage. Let us hope so.  In the meantime,
the 
subject will be discussed with increased vigour, not only as to the principle
of 
Patent Laws and respect for inventive property, but as to the easiest and
best 
mode of recognising the right; and we are particularly glad to witness the
utterance of views perfectly sound on these points in so influential a journal
as the Times. The following is an excellent corroboration of what we have
been saying for twelve months past:- 
" They who are opposed to the granting of any privilege by patent, rest
their 
opposition first upon the injustice of such a grant, and then upon the impossibility
of 
making the intended privilege secure. They do not, however, keep these two
items 
of objection very distinct, but constantly jumble them together, confusing
thereby 
both their hearers and themselves. Let us, however, do for these objectors
what they 
have not done for themselves, and ask wherein lies the injustice of the proposed
pri- 
vileges, and, if we find no such injustice to exist, let us endeavour to
ascertan in what 
consists the difficulty of creating and protecting the right by legislative
enactment. 
* "When it is said that a privilege of this nature is unjust, we suppose
we are to 
understand that what is meant to be asserted is, that the community generally
is 
injured thereby; that invention is by this means retarded, in place of being
promoted; 
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