in prison; I will now also damn the patent, and this may seem instead of a pardon. All these three I will have recalled by proclamation, and wish you to advise of the fittest form to that purpose."[1] In the course of the debates upon the subject in the Commons, Mr. (afterwards Serjeant) Noy explained the manner in which these patents were applied for and obtained. "Before any patent is passed," said the learned member, "there is first a petition to his majesty, showing what good will accrue to the commonwealth by granting of the same, and what increase of benefit to the king, and what abuses for want of such a remedy as they propound do abound; whereon the king ever referreth the petition to some whom his majesty thinketh fittest to consider of the petition, both for matter of law, convenience, and good of the state and commonwealth; and thereupon the referees are to certify his majesty the truth of what they think of the petition; and, as they certify for the lawfulness and conveniency and good both of his majesty and his estate, and the particular good of the commonwealth, his majesty accordingly granteth it."[2] With all this show, however, of regard for the public good, no doubt can be entertained for a moment, from the character of these old monopolies, that the only thing that was really looked to in the bargain between the crown and the applicant was the amount of the sum of money the latter was inclined to offer for the patent; if that was sufficiently large, the recommendation of the referees, we may safely presume, was in general a matter of course. It is highly probable, indeed, that they expected and received, in all cases, a bribe for themselves as well as for their royal master. Nobody at this time, however, went the length of maintaining that the right of granting such patents, if properly exercised, was not, at least within certain limits, a prerogative of the crown. Those of the existing monopolies that were attacked were objected to principally on the ground that they were prejudicial to the public interest, either in their very nature or because the patentee had
