ape of the limited monopoly. 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. The price demanded will be high, and the commodity or the work
will be bad in proportion. Thus much, indeed, of political economy our
ancestors of the reign of King James knew. But it must be admitted,
that they strangely confounded it with a totally different
matter--with that forestalling of which we lately gave an account. The
difference is, that in the one case there is the right to buy and sell
as much of a commodity, or as little of it, as you please; and, in the
other, the right to be the sole seller of the commodity. It is as
great as the difference between freedom and slavery. No man can ever
obtain a monopoly through money, unless it be by underselling all
others; and that is a form in which it need not be grudged. However
wide may be the field occupied by the forestaller, he cannot prevent
others from competing