It is certainly good and just public policy that the Government should spend a good deal of money for the benefit of the farmers, but where is the justice and the good public policy in making money out of the inventors? (See statistics of the fiscal returns from the Patent Office.) Is the former more indispensable to society than the latter? Has not the ingenuity of the inventor enabled even the farmer, the special protegÉ of the Government, to get greater returns from his labor than ever in the history of the world? Has he not made his task lighter, and has he not enabled him to get more of the good things of the world for the earnings of his labor? And is it not in a great measure through the inventor's ingenuity and industry that this country has attained its unprecedented prosperity in Peace and mighty potency in War?