Society pays them for their labor, and not for the usefulness of the invention.

_That_ has become a gratuitous benefit, a common heritage to mankind.
The wisdom and beauty of these laws strike me with admiration and reverence.
What has been said of printing, can be extended to every agent for the advancement of labor--from the nail and the mallet, up to the locomotive and the electric telegraph.

Society enjoys all, by the abundance of its use, its consumption; and it _enjoys all gratuitously_.

For as their effect is to diminish prices, it is evident that just so much of the price as is taken off by their intervention, renders the production in so far _gratuitous_.

There only remains the actual labor of man to be paid for; and the remainder, which is the result of the invention, is subtracted; at least after the invention has run through the cycle which I have just described as its destined course.