models, we shall depart from nature and good to the cherished offspring of their genius, since it taste? In striving to be original may we not pro- gave a foretaste of that posthumous reputation duce an uncouth monster, half woman, half fish; which was the ultimate goal of their ambition. an object not of admiration but of derision and dis- They felt like Milton, when he sold the Copyright gust? But if, on the other hand, he wishes Ame- of Paradise Lost for the paltry sum of twenty rican literature to receive its form and pressure pounds, that fame should not be weighed against from English classics, to imbibe their spirit and pecuniary emolument; that the noblest recompense reflect their image, while I readily subscribe to the of intellectual effort consists in the contemplation reasonableness of such a sentiment, I must avow of its beneficent effects, and in the grateful apmy utter inability to comprehend the source of his plauses of mankind. In this calculating age, litemorbid jealousy of British dictation. I shall not rary ambition has assumed an opposite direction. deny that the creation of an American literature is Quærenda pecunia primum, fama post nummos is a great desideratum, and I devoutly believe that, in now the prevailing maxim. Men of the first abilithe fullness of time, that literature is destined to ties, content with a transient popularity, expend attain a glorious maturity, even though cheap books their great powers on the production of ephemera, should continue to multiply, and International Copy-destined, like insects, to perish in the passing hour. right be consigned with other crude projects to the Haste and prolixity-formerly condemned as faults, gulf of oblivion. It does not follow, because we are held in the highest esteem at a time, when the waste the midnight oil in the study of those ex- desideratum is to produce in the shortest space quisite specimens of human genius furnished by the largest quantity of light, flimsy, fugitive stuff, the mother country in our common tongue, that we which, brought to the alembic of just criticism, are yet in mental leading strings, or that the Ame- would dwindle to the most insignificant dimensions, rican mind is dormant, because in the turmoil of yielding scarce a pennyworth of useful thought to business we have not time to compose books. As this enormous bulk of materials. In truth, bookthe wilderness is subdued, cities grow up, wealth making has been converted into a trade, a manuand population are augmented, more men will have facture, in which quantity is regarded more than leisure to write, and many will be driven by the quality, and profit more than fame. It was natural, competition in other pursuits to devote themselves therefore, that your correspondent, E. D. should be to science and letters as a means of subsistence. struck with a resemblance between the productions This revolution has already begun, and the day-of mind and the humble efforts of a butcher or spring of American literature is now dawning with tailor, since, now-a-days, the operatives in these every prospect of a brilliant meridian. opposite departments are governed by the same principles of action.

By tracing the course of the discussion in reference to International Copyright, the motives The notion, that the rights of authors, as dewhich have kindled such a fiery and intolerant zeal fined by the new school of Dickens and Carlyle, among its trans-Atlantic advocates, may be easily rest on the same principles of natural right with decyphered. The unexampled growth of our coun- property in general, and should in justice be placed try in wealth and population, the general spread of upon the same footing, has never been recognized education among our people, and their insatiable by any government in practice, and, if pursued to appetite for new publications, amounting almost to its legitimate results, involves the most startling a mania, have given birth to the greatest literary conclusions; though E. D. contends that, to deny market in the world. The cupidity of English it, would be "to strike at the root of all intellectual writers has been awakened by the prospect of labor, and to make the very existence of Copyright engrossing this vast market, and hence their ani-a continued injustice." A book, or a manuscript, mosity against every man who has the hardihood to which an individual has printed, or written, unquestion the validity of their claims to such a lucra- doubtedly belongs to him, and he may refuse to tive monopoly, their furious denunciation of the publish, or impart it in any form, till he has been cheap republication of their works in this country paid his price; and this was the only ownership as another, and more aggravated form of literary which the ancients asserted in their works, when piracy, and their labored efforts to assimilate the they sold copies to be transcribed or recited. When rights of authors to other forms of property. This they had been recited, or published, and were thus clamor is of recent date. The great writers of incorporated into the mass of general knowledge, the last generation, though the demand here for the ancients claimed no further property in their foreign books was even then immense, raised no contents, nor considered it any breach of right in such question-uttered no complaint, because we those who had heard, or read them, to appropriate had not found it convenient, or politic to admit them their thoughts or language. Modern governments to the privileges of Copyright. The gains of lite- have gone a step farther, and secured to authors a rary labor were to them a secondary and subordi- temporary and exclusive property, not only in the nate consideration; and they were justly flattered original copy of their writings, but, to some extent, by the homage of a distant and enlightened nation in the words and ideas they contain; and this

limited right is to continue even after publication. it would be a matter of perfect indifference whether The position of the friends of International Copy- they were recorded in books, or imparted in public right is, that this artificial ownership, thus cau- speeches, or private discourse. In whatever form tiously limited, is not a mere contrivance of policy, they were embodied, they would still remain the but is analogous in all its features and incidents to subject of an absolute, unqualified ownership, which other descriptions of property, and founded like it would be criminal to invade, or violate, and them in the paramount laws of nature and justice. which it would be, not only the province, but the Property in things tangible, in the fruits of bodily imperative duty of civil government to protect. A labor is not, according to the theory of the best man would be entitled, on this hypothesis, not only writers on natural jurisprudence, a mere conven- to the immediate usufruct of his own conceptions, tional arrangement. It results from the very con- but to every remote and incidental advantage to be stitution of human nature, and must have apper- derived from them. They are his by a title as tained to man in all conditions, whether antecedent, certain and indubitable as his horse, his land, or or subsequent to the formation of civil society. As any tangible possession; and no one has a right cupidity is one of the strongest passions of man- to use these for any purpose without his consent. kind, this right, more than other natural rights, Such are the attributes of all other property, and, would have been peculiarly liable to the assaults of if Copyright belongs to the same category, it must rapacious violence, because it would have presented partake of the same qualities and incidents. If irresistible temptations to lawless and unprincipled this doctrine be well-founded, then plagiarism should marauders, prone to indulge their covetous and in- be stigmatized as felony, and even to use, or repeat dolent propensities at the expense of the weak the thoughts of another without any improper deand defenceless; and hence the desire to secure it sign should expose the person so offending to a must have formed the principal inducement to the civil action for the recovery of damages. Innofirst establishment of regular government. Being cence of intention would avail nothing in the defounded on those immutable principles of justice, fence of such an action, because, to appropriate acknowledged by the whole human race, the State the property of our neighbor to our own convewas bound to guaranty its undisturbed enjoyment, nience, or profit, for a single instant, knowing it to shield the possession of the owner against the to be his and without his permission, is, in strictencroachments of fraud, or force. In all civilized ness, a breach of his rights, and he is entitled to communities, therefore, property has been fenced reparation commensurate to the extent of the inround with every legal sanction, and fortified by jury. Neither could the defendant in such a case the terrors of punishment. If Copyright derives be allowed to plead, that he had made the plaintiff's its origin from the same source, it is entitled to the thoughts his own by clothing them in new lansame ample securities. To seize on and appro-guage and enforcing them by original illustrations; priate it by stealth, or violence, without the con- for he would be told that no disguise could change sent of the owner, would be moral theft, or robbery, and should be visited by the same infamous chastisement. And yet such a crime is unknown to any penal code, and, so far as I know, not even hinted at as a hypothetical improvement in the speculations of Beccaria, or the codifications of Bentham.

the intrinsic nature of the thing-that a thought, however transformed by the artifices of diction, or enveloped in rhetorical ornament, continues the property of the first inventor till divested by his own voluntary alienation.

But it may be alleged that, before the author of any new idea can complain of its wrongful approThose who affirm that an author has an inhe-priation by others, or reclaim it as his individual rent property in his writings at all times and in all property, he must announce his title to the world, places, do not mean to confine that property to the and fix his mark upon it by some unequivocal act, mere paper and packthread, the gilt letters and such as the publication of a book; that, otherwise, Russia leather for no one disputes his title to these the first comer may seize it as a waif and apply it visible objects, when they are either the work of to his own use without the imputation of fraud, or his own industry, or purchased with his own re-injustice. Is it not manifest from this very dissources. The proposition is, doubtless, intended tinction, that the supposed analogy between the to have a much wider signification. It is designed productions of mental labor and other property is to embrace the language, and, more especially, the wholly illusory? Under what system of law does thoughts, without which words are "mere sound the security of human possessions depend on either and fury signifying nothing." These, the fruit of a formal, or constructive proclamation of title to patient research and meditation, give a distinctive the wrong doer? And is not the fraudulent approcharacter to every book and constitute its chief priation of the goods of another, with a felonious value as a source of amusement, or instruction. intent, theft in the eye of reason and by the prinThe essence then, the substratum of all literary ciples of every penal code, though the owner of property consists in the thoughts of an author, and, the stolen property be unknown? But if thoughts if these could naturally be converted into property, be property, surely that property can be asserted

and made known in some other mode, than by the was solemnly adjudged, as far back as 1774, by publication of a book. When a new idea is im- the highest legal tribunal of that country in the parted either in public or private discourse, what case of Donaldson vs. Becket, that, at common law, hinders its author, at the very moment of its utte- an unwritten code, professing to embody the prinrance, from making continual claim to the exclu- ciples of natural justice and reason so far as those sive use and benefit of the conception, from pro- principles can be reconciled to the artificial constitesting against any implied waiver of his rights in tution of society, an author has no exclusive Copybehalf of his audience? Such a notification would right in his writings, and holds only a temporary be less liable to misconstruction than even the act interest in them under the authority of statutes. of printing, and would effectually repel the pre- Had an opposite principle been decided in that mesumption of an abandonment of title. On the prin-morable case, it would have followed, that by the ciples of those who maintain the resemblance be- common law of England and of this country, tween Copyright and other kinds of property, it is which is essentially the same system, Copyright a necessary deduction, that this right, thus pro- was perpetual; that it must be subject to the same claimed and insisted on, is as clearly founded in rules and guarded by the same sanctions with other natural justice and as much entitled to the protec- property. No statute would have been required to tion of the civil magistrate, as the vaunted claim establish, or protect the rights of authors, either of an author to the profits of his writings. foreign or domestic; for, the moment that the comLet us examine the soundness of this new-found common law recognized them as property, that beanalogy between Copyright and the other forms of neficent and comprehensive code would have exproperty by another test. It is contended, that tended its ample shield over them in all places and the rights of authors originate in the same abstract provided adequate remedies to prevent, or compenprinciples of justice with other human possessions- sate their infraction. Yet, if those rights rested, that, therefore, governments are under the same fundamental obligation to recognize and protect them and that the indelible stigma of fraud and dishonesty is branded upon those who neglect, or refuse to fulfil this paramount duty. It follows from these premises, that they should be held by the same tenure, governed by the same rules with other property-that they should be modified or abridged by no considerations of expediency-divested only by the voluntary alienation of the owner-not even forfeited on the overruling plea of state necessity without adequate compensation. Concede that they derive their validity from the same source with other human possessions, and you are bound to ensure their perpetuity; for justice is inflexible, and will not be content with a partial satisfaction. In this view, to secure the rights of authors for ten, or twenty years, for any limited period of time, falls infinitely short of their equitable claims, and, to parody one of E. D.'s graphic illustrations, a state, acting on this niggard policy, resembles one of those courteous robbers, who, after stripping the unfortunate traveller of his all, generously refunds a sufficiency to defray the expenses of his journey.

in truth, on the same original principles with property in general, the decision in Donaldson vs. Becket was undoubtedly erroneous and subversive of natural right and justice.

If the right of men to the exclusive use and application of their own conceptions had, in the origin of society, been placed on the same footing, in point of security and duration, with property in the fruits of bodily labor, and in tangible possessions, it is obvious, that such a system would have fettered the energies of the human mind, and interposed insuperable barriers to the progress of knowledge. Every great achievement of intellect has been the result of combined effort, of the united resources of many minds coöperating in the accomplishment of the same enterprize. Trace the history of any valuable improvement in art, or science, and you will find that it was not a sudden inspiration, an intuitive perception, a mere accident; but that the author was conducted progressively to the point of discovery by the vestiges of previous adventurers in the same path of speculation; that the obscurity in which some important truth was involved had been gradually dispelled by successive flashes of intellectual light, until the electric spark of geIn every country with whose history I am ac- nius had at length revealed it in the blaze of perquainted, where literary property has a legal exis- fect day. It is because mental acquisitions have tence, that existence is restrained to a space of been regarded in all ages as a common fund for the time, longer, or shorter, according to the caprice, benefit of our race, that philosophic research has or the policy of the legislator. Nowhere has it penetrated so deeply the hidden secrets of nature, been admitted as a claim of right, or put upon the and guided benevolent effort to such brilliant trisame footing, in point of character, or extent, with umphs in the career of moral and social reform. other possessions. And yet, who has been heard Let the domain of thought be parcelled out and to complain of this statutory limitation as an act of appropriated, and you confine each individual withimperfect justice? to insist that the duration of in his own narrow circle; you throw him back on Copyright should be perpetual? Even in England, his own scanty resources, unaided by the exhaustwhere his claim of right has been first set up, it less stores of knowledge accumulated by the la

bors of his fellow men. On this system he would benefactor, not because of the magnitude of the be debarred from the use of any moral, or political benefits conferred by him, but mainly on account truth, of any invention, or improvement in art, or of the benevolence of his motives. None is due science, in short, of every production of genius, to him whose aid is prompted, not by kindness, but which he could not claim as his own by actual by selfish and mercenary views. I am indebted purchase, or by the right of original discovery; to the butcher and the tailor for food and raiment, for I defy the most subtle and ingenious advocate but when I purchase those necessary commodities, of Copyright to distinguish, on the principles of it will hardly be pretended that I am bound by any natural justice, between property in thoughts pro- ties of gratitude to those useful craftsmen. In mulgated in books and thoughts orally communi- like manner, when the principal incentive of an cated. Had Newton, or Leibnitz, claimed perpetual author is pecuniary emolument, whatever may be and exclusive ownership in the differential calcu- the ability, or usefulness of his writings, the sellus, and converted that invention into an instru- fishness of the motive cancels the claim, which ment of gain, the miracles wrought by the agency he might otherwise prefer to the gratitude of manof that splendid conception would, instead of em- kind. The great luminaries of science and literabellishing the history of the past age, have been ture have not been actuated in the production of postponed to some distant epoch in the depths of their immortal works by such narrow and grovelfuturity. But, to present a still more striking illus-ling considerations. Though not insensible to the tration, let us imagine for a moment, that the use movements of personal interest, those illustrious of the Novum Organon, or the Principia had been trammelled by the fetters of a perpetual Copyright, is it not probable, that modern philosophy, deprived of free access to these great works, would have been still groping in the obscure unprofitable subtleties of scholastic disputation?

dence; and if such claims are in their nature so vague and indeterminate, that no legislator has deemed them the proper subject of judicial interference in the relations of private life, their force is infinitely weakened in reference to governments, charged with the happiness and well-being of multitudes, and which, from the very objects of their institution, are bound to act in subserviency to the interests of the governed.

men were governed by nobler impulses. Ambition, that "last infirmity of noble minds," the love of fame, the general good were their ruling principles of action, and to suppose them so covetous of gain as to prefer their own profit to the improvement of their species, is to disparage the purity of Perhaps, to elude the force of this reasoning, it their motives and to pluck from them the brightest will be said that the friends of copyright, admitting chaplet that adorns their brows. At the most, that the argument of inconvenience is conclusive gratitude between man and man constitutes what, against its unlimited extension, are content to give by the definition of ethical writers, is called an such a brief and transitory existence to that franchise imperfect obligation, a mere voluntary and sponas may promote the advancement of literature with-taneous tribute enforced by no system of jurispruout compromising the great interests of society. The ground of justice, of its having the same root in natural right with property in general, must then be abandoned. Expediency can never enter into the discussion of a just claim except with those who make utility the basis of all moral obligation. The moral duty of governments to provide a recompense for literary labor is sometimes referred to a different sentiment. It is said, that we owe a debt of gratitude to the great men, whose invalu- Some things, such as air and light, are essenable works have contributed to our amusement and tially incapable of permanent appropriation, and instruction, and that the most appropriate mode of have, therefore, never been considered the proper evincing our sense of their services, of ensuring subject of ownership. In some of their characthem an ample remuneration, is to give them a teristics the operations of mind resemble these legal property in their writings. It is obvious indispensible supports of physical life. They are that this view of the subject assigns to Copyright too subtile, too diffusive, too easily transmitted to a very different origin from other property; for our be fixed in one spot, to be imprisoned within defiduty to acknowledge the claims of a benefactor is nite boundaries; and as they furnish aliment to the of a complexion altogether distinct from our obli- moral and spiritual world, the wise Creator of the gation to reimburse the services of a common la- universe seems to have designed them as the comborer. If we refuse to comply with the one, we mon heritage of our race. The air and light, violate the plainest dictates of honesty; if we which enter our dwellings dispensing warmth, vifail in the other, we may be called ungrateful, but tality and comfort to the inhabitants, are ours so are scarcely chargeable with injustice, or breach long as they remain within those peculiar limits, of faith. Gratitude is a refined and elevated sen- and no one can disturb us in their possession and timent, and it is repugnant to the delicacy, as well enjoyment without an infraction of our rights; but as degrading to the dignity of that virtue to con- when they are restored to the general circulation fine its exercise to a sordid traffic of pecuniary of those elements, the whole human family are advantages. It is a tribute which we owe to a entitled to an equal participation in their benefits.