sons among the varied classes of American literary laborers would be benefited by this species of tariff tax now clamored for upon intellectual as well as mechanical importation, it would certainly seem to be our unfortunate but disinterested selves. We trust, therefore, that some of the long forgotten decencies of literary controversy may be maintained toward us by those who will probably lift up their indignant hands in holy horror at our present backsliding; and that however damnably heretical in the notion we have ventured to assert in the opening words hereinabove writ, in phrase more emphatic perhaps than elegant, honesty of motive may obtain forbear ance and forgiveness for hallucination of judgment.

Let us look a little into this matterand with our own eyes, and not with those of Mr. Carlyle, or Mr. Dickens, or Mr. Talfourd, or any of the popular English authors with whom, when they turn their eyes across the Atlantic, and behold their own vernacular diffusing itself through these rapidly growing millions over a new world, the wish for the privilege in question is naturally enough father to the thought that it is a right. Let us not be too hasty in assuming, because a petition addresses itself to Congress with an array of some of the most illustrious names of living English literature and science, as long and luminous as the tail of a comet, that therefore it must follow as a bounden duty and necessity, for all desirous of claiming a place within the sacred pale of the polite humanities, to adopt the same doctrine, and unite with them in demanding from our government that "justice" for these glorious foreigners, which is the more attractive to our imagination because clothed in the garb of a gratuitous generosity. And if ourselves, unfortunately or fortunately, dabblers in printer's-ink, let us not be too easily misled by the specious argument of the protective school, which addresses our selfish interest by urging that the foreign competition is destructive to the native production and to the growth of a national literature, because free from the restriction of copyright; the addition of which, by raising the price of the English book and restricting the freedom of its republication, would operate as a tax for

the benefit of the American one. Let us look a little into the matter for ourselves, and endeavor to get at the true right and reason of it.

Before going further into "the bowels of the land"--before dealing with the higher elements of the question, in its moral aspects-we may as well dispose of this meaner argument of selfish expediency which seems to be the leading idea of those who preach International Copyright from the text of rights and interests of American authors.

I go to a publisher, says one of the latter class, but what chance have I of a favorable reception to my work, when he can have, to engross his capital and his business, as many of the best productions of the rich and active mind of England as he chooses to print, without either with your leave or by your leave to the author, for the mere cost of a single copy in any bookstore in Paternoster Row. This will be the answer which he will leave me to digest with the best stomach I may, while cooling my heels at his inhospitable door, until my starvation forces from me an unconditional submission to his extortion, and he gets my book, even if he is willing to print it at all, on the same terms for which he has the English one at his command-i. e., for nothing, or next to it. Now, this reasoning is altogether a mistake. If our publishers, engaged in any extent or activity of business, ever show themselves very reluctant to accept the offer of manuscripts by American authors, the latter may depend upon it that some very different reason lies at the bottom of the fact which seems to them so unaccountable, whatever may be the polite plausibilities with which the civil bibliopole will perhaps gild the unpleasant pill of his negative. The truth is, that in ordinary times, when any kind of expansion of business can be ventured upon, instead of reluctance they are all eagerness to get good American manuscripts to pubfish, because it is in them alone that they can find exemption from the interference of rival editions. The English book can be had on the same terms by a dozen enterprising competitors; and if it is at all popular, they may wake up any fine morning and find their edition altogether cut out of the market by the cheap form issued by

International Copyright being called for by the interests of American literature and American literary men, the reverse is most emphatically the truth; and that if any such compensating tax on republication is necessary to equalize the copyright disadvantage complained of, in its effect on price, it had better be put in the shape of a tariff or excise duty above suggested.

But to go a step further in this same argument of expediency. Will the addition of the author's remuneration, to the mechanical cost alone incurred in republication, so affect the price as materially to impair the fair chance of competition on the part of the American book, assuming a fair equality of merit? Granting that it might, under the old system of the book trade, that of small editions and high prices (though even then it is not certain but that this difference would have its compensations)—yet there is clearly no force in this consideration under the new system which we see rapidly springing up, and destined soon to subvert the old by a revolution which we hail with high satisfaction. The fact is, that our publishers are just beginning to open their eyes to the truth that their real interest is not to raise their prices to the maximum that a book will tolerably stand, but to bring them down to the minimum which will yield a very small surplus on each volume above the mechanical cost of a decent typography. In all these matters of general public convenience or entertainment--such as public conveyances, exhibitions, postage, newspapers, &c., &c., including ninetynine books in a hundred printed-as a general rule every reduction of price, down to a certain limit, is accompanied by an enlargement of the number of persons within whose ability the thing in question is brought, in a ratio much greater than that of the reduction. An arithmetical progression of the one will be accompanied by a geometrical progression of the other. If a certain number of persons can afford to give a dollar for any such purpose-the book, for instance-far more than twice as many can afford to give a half-dollar; probably at least four times, perhaps six or eight times as many. If the price be still further reduced to a quarter-dollar, the circle of ability will continue to widen with

still larger and larger sweep, and the multiplication of the number of profits will be found to proceed faster than the division of their individual amount. To the operation of this law there are of course limits, which the combined caution and enterprise of an unrestricted freedom of trade will not generally be slow to find out with tolerable correctness. Within the last few years the system of cheap publication has made large and rapid steps both in this country and England. It has been but little applied among us to works of domestic production, because in the security of copyright monopoly (we do not mean to use the word in any odious sense)-the publishers have not felt that stimulus of competition which has constantly urged further and further in the direction of cheapness those rival establishments which have embarked in the business of republishing the free popular English works of the day. But it will undoubtedly extend itself to them likewise, as in fact it has already begun to do; witness the cheap form in which Cooper's novels have recently been issued, twenty-five cents a volume. Under the operation of this system, we shall no longer have the public for whom good books are furnished, by the combined labor of author and publisher, limited to a little aristocracy of readers of one or two thousand enjoying the privilege of possession, with another set of "the inferior sort" waiting humbly for their more distant chance of possible perusal by loan from friends or hire from libraries. Editions will be numbered by thousands, where they before counted by tens or hundreds. The difference of price on the single copy to cover the cost of copyright, above the cost of the free foreign republication, will thus be reduced to so small an amount as not to be materially sensible to the individual purchaser; while, on the other hand, the American author, truly entitled to popularity by merit, possesses advantages of national sympathy and patriotic pride on the part of the people, and on his own part those of adaptation of subject, and comprehension of the character and taste of his countrymen, which will more than compensate this difference of price, were it even much larger than it is likely to be.

Let it not be said that this new system of cheap publication which is now every day rising higher and higher into established strength and success, must continue confined to the light productions of fiction and fancy which have thus far chiefly engaged it. It is not only susceptible of application to works of a higher tone and more permanent value, but is already beginning to be applied to them; witness the success of Liebig's Animal Chemistry, for instance, issued by the publishers of the "New World," to whom we consider the public gratitude in no small degree due for having been among the first and most enterprising to start and stimulate this revolution in the book trade; and we have the authority of one of the greatest publishing firms in the country (who have themselves had the sagacity to see the tendency of the times, and to follow in the direction of this new popular movement in their own business), for the belief that we shall before long in this country witness the application of this new idea of the very cheap publication of very large editions, carried to greater lengths in works of useful popular science and information, than it has yet been in those of a character comparatively trashy and ephemeral. The book-trade at the present period is in a state of great confusion; it is passing through a transition stage-a kind of democratic revolution, as yet scarce more than begun. We warn the old members of the regular trade that they cannot hold out against the competition of the new system. It is vain to imagine that they can arrest it by petitions to Congress for an International Copyright law, in the hope of getting the possession and control of those books which are now thus published at such rates as to make it impossible for them to sell a large part of their own stock on hand, except at rates of reduction in price from the contemplation of which they shrink shuddering. They must come into it themselves, to organize, complete and improve it. True, the present semi-newspaper form of most of the cheap publications, with their small type, inferior paper, and careless typography, can never satisfy the demands of the public taste. It is not to be tolerated that these should be the only kind of books that we are henceforth to read.

But these are as yet merely the first rude experiments of the new system. Cheapness thus far has been the only point looked to in it; and, for the kind of works to which it has yet been applied, which no one reads a second time, this form has been quite sufficient. They will soon improve in neatness, and be issued in shapes better adapting them for preservation. The important improvements which every year is bringing forth in all the departments of the mechanics of book-making will soon permit the issue of large editions of books of very respectable appearance at prices little, if at all, beyond those for which we are now astonished to get even these very unsightly and unsatisfactory productions of the press which are hawked about the street-corners at a shilling or two a copy. And while wealth will still be able to gratify its taste for elegance and luxury, in richer editions of a comparatively small number of works immortal in their nature and worthy of all such decoration, the great mass of books will be published in such forms as will admit of these low prices necessary to command a very wide popular circulation.

The interest of the American author is not, then, favorable to the proposed measure, and the superficial arguments of expediency in his behalf which are urged, in coöperation with that moral right asserted by the British petitioners to the enjoyment of this privilege, possesses no other force than one acting in the very opposite direction. It remains to consider this alleged moral right, for our omission to recognize which Mr. Dickens, Mr. Carlyle, and others, have thundered against us, as a nation, those denunciations which have awakened so many responsive reverberations on our own side of the ocean. It is needless for us to repeat that if it can be established, every consideration of our own interest-whether general, on the part of the public enjoying the unrestricted and untaxed access to the best treasures of the literature of the language, or special, on the part of the large manufacturing, mechanical, and commercial interests involved in the business of republication-must be thrown to the winds, and justice be done-whatever the cost or sacrificeto the stranger as well without as within

our gates. This question may be made plain enough in a very few words.

May I not light my candle at my neighbor's lamp, without wrong to him or to my own conscience, if I can do so without intrusion upon him in the process, or inconvenience to him or his? If he kindle a fire within his own domain and for his own purposes, but in a situation where its heat may reach me within the limits of mine, may I not bask in the genial glow, without a moral obligation to pay for it? If he rear for himself a dwelling of noblest architecture, and surround it with all the loveliness of cultivated nature which wealth can command and art create, may not I and mine gratify our taste by the enjoyment of it all from the precincts of our own humbler home, without being required to erect, on my side of the boundary, a wall which shall shut out the rays of the sun that bring the image of the beauty he has built, and the breezes of heaven that are charged with the perfume of the flowers he has planted-a wall never to be transgressed by me without the payment of a toll or a tax to him? Or, to generalize the idea, when one individual has created a good which is susceptible of multiplied reproduction, to the benefit of others or of the whole human race, without diminution of his special enjoyment of his own, or any manner of interference with him, according to all the rights and purposes under which and for which he originally created it, is the principle of Property so exclusive in its monopoly, as to forbid this unlimited diffusion of a blessing which God has chosen one man to be the minister of to the race? Perish the base contracted selfishness of such a principle!

To all these forms of putting the same question, there can be but a single answer, which is also the rightful answer to this English demand for American copyright. The English author-Mr. Dickens for instance, since he appears to stand at the head of this movement has written his book for the large and liberal reading public of his own country, under the rights, for his compensation and protection, conferred upon him by its institutions and laws; how is he injured by the reproduction and diffusion of the same in

another country, three thousand miles across an ocean, a distinct political body? He has certainly been richly enough paid at home, in pecuniary reward as well as in public honor, for what he has done, to leave him but slender ground on which to ask a return of mere volunteer generosity on our part for the pleasure his admirable writings have afforded us. How is he injured if we do enjoy that pleasure, free as his home market is left from interference by our republications—that market for which he writes; under the laws of which he derives all his legal rights and protection; and from which he receives a most munificent compensation? The case is precisely analogous to those we have supposed above. He can only claim a right to such return from us on the ground that one human being can never have a right to receive good or pleasure, directly or indirectly, from the labors of another, even though nothing is withdrawn from the latter in the process, without a payment-and a payment in money, setting out of view the reciprocal pleasure of fame and of conscious benefaction. God forbid that so cold and wretched a principle of natural morals should ever be either admitted or asserted! We once thought otherwise, but would now deny altogether the principle of a natural right of literary property, absolute, exclusive, and perpetual. The inspiration which speaks through the organ of the poet or the philosopher, or which directs the ingenuity of the inventor, is not his own, nor has he any such right of individual property in that which it has at once commanded and taught him to give to the world, as to be free, for himself, his heirs, executors, adminis trators or assigns for ever, to do with it what may seem meet to him or them-to destroy or suppress it, or forbid access to it to the whole or any portions of the race. If this complete right of property existed, such as is and must be contended for by the International-Copyrightists, so long as the right of hereditary transmission is held an inseparable incident to property, it would follow not only that the whole world must be subject to a perpetual tax or tribute to the author of any great intellectual product, as a Paradise Lost or a steam-engine, and to his descendants, or those of the