The Bell telephone patents expired.
This jurisdiction is undoubtedly extensive, comprising among others, power to legislate concerning trade and industry, criminal law, taxation, quarantine, marriage and divorce, weights and measures, legal tender, copyrights and patents, and naturalization and aliens.
We know indeed that he sympathized cordially with the home policy of the government; he had no objection to such monopolies or patents as seemed advantageous to the country, and for this he is certainly not to be blamed.'
But we know also that the patents were so numerous as to be oppressive, and we can scarcely avoid inferring that Bacon more readily saw the advantages to the government than the disadvantages to the people.
In November 1620, when a new parliament was summoned to meet on January following, he earnestly pressed that the most obnoxious patents, those of alehouses and inns, and the monopoly of gold and silver thread, should be given up, and wrote to Buckingham, whose brothers were interested, advising him to withdraw them from the impending storm.
