But the indefinite or very long
continuance of this would only levy a tax to enrich those who have
performed no service, and would fill the country with endless
litigation. To return, however, to our special subject.
It may be a new thing to some of our readers, to hear of a patent more
than two hundred years old. The cause of the anomaly is, that this
exclusive privilege was granted before the present patent-law was
extended to Scotland by the Union. Anderson called the pills _Grana
Angelica_. He published an account of their astonishing virtues in a
little Latin essay, which bears date 1635; and as it is believed that
there are not more than three copies of this in existence, it is worth
more than its weight in gold. He did not profess to be the inventor or
discoverer of the medicine, but stated that he had found it in use at
Venice.
Small as was thus the service for which Anderson and his posterity
were endowed with a perpetual monopoly in these pills, it would have
been well for the Stuart dynasty of kings if all monopolies granted by
them had been as well deserved and as innocent. On the matter of
monopolies, our ancestors had a hard struggle, and they acquitted
themselves like men of sagacity and courage. The word monopoly is
derived from the Greek. It means, sole-selling, and expresses itself
at once. It is almost unnecessary at the present day to announce the
law of political economy, that wherever a small number of individuals
acquire the exclusive privilege of selling any commodity, or
undertaking any particular kind of service, the public will be ill
served.
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