the ancient sickle, and a brush scythe, with a short, thick blade, heavily braced, for cutting bushes and brambles, in place of the English bill-hook.
Governor Morton saw, too, that his transmontane colony, not able to export much of its crude products to Europe, as the three hundred miles or more of land carriage would be too expensive, must manufacture for itself, especially heavy and bulky articles; and to do this profitably, with so many hands needed so much in subduing savage nature, would require better machinery than the world had yet seen. Many skillful mechanics, from Holland, Flanders, Genoa, Venice, and the Free Cities of Germany, had come to Aristopia. These were stimulated by hope of reward, both of money and honor, to invent new machines and improve old ones. Laws were passed either allowing the inventor of a mechanical device the sole right of making and selling it for a term of years, or, if the commonwealth saw fit to manufacture the device, obliging it to pay the inventor a premium (better understood as a "royalty") on each article; but these premiums should not aggregate more than ten thousand dollars, for it was not thought meet
