The law of property, in all its relations and
aspects, is one of these primary anchors and
fastenings of the social frame. And what evils,
I am asked, have grown from the alleged neglect
of literary property? I will mention one,
by way of illustration.

You are all of you aware, by this time, that
the extensive printing and publishing establishment
of Harper and Brothers, Cliff street, New
York, was burned in the early part of June, and
that a heavy loss accrued to them from the
burning.

The fire was attributed, immediately after it
occurred, by the public prints to the hand of design.
“It is supposed that one object of the incendiaries
was to obtain copies of a new novel by
James, of which the Messrs. Harper had the exclusive
possession.” Another paper enlarges
this statement; “We see suspicion expressed
that the object was to get possession of a new
novel, `Morley Ernstein,' which was in sheets,
for cheap publication.” Here is a natural, logical
sequence, and just such a one as might
have been expected. If the conjecture should
not prove a fact, it ought to be one, because
this is just the period and the very order in
which we might expect an incident of this kind
to occur—perhaps not on quite so large a scale
nor with the necessary melo-dramatic admixture
of fire. It might have been a plain burglary,
prying a warehouse door open with a bar,
for a copy; or knocking a man over, at the
edge of evening, and plucking the sheets from
under his arm.

Piracy and burning are perhaps so nearly akin
that, after all, they have wrought out the sequence
more naturally than if it had been left to
the friends of copyright to suggest to them in what
order they should occur. In Elia's legend a
building is burned that a famishing China-man
may have roast pig; in the reality of the
present fire, a publisher's warehouse was put in
flames, not only to prevent a famishing author
from having roast pig in præsenti, but also, by
a decisive blow, to further the good principle
that there should be no roast pig, nay, even salt
and a radish, for famishing authors in all future
time. Let it not be said I press this point, a
mere surmise, too far. Surmise as it is, it receives
countenance and consistency from a previous
fact, namely, that one of the large republishing
newspapers was charged not long since
by the other—and this was made a matter for
the sessions—with the felony of abstracting the
sheets of an English work from the office of its
rival. This, an invasion of property, is only
one of the external evils growing out of a false
and lawless state of things. Of others, which
strike deeper; which create confusion and error
of opinion; which tend to unsettle the lines
that divide nation from nation; to obliterate the
traits and features which give us a characteristic
individuality as a nation; there will be
another, and more becoming opportunity to
speak.

As it is, by fair means or foul, the weekly
newspaper press, with its broad-sheet spread to
the breeze, is making great head against the
slow-sailing progress of such as trust to the
more regular trade-winds for their speed. And
this, fortunately (as error can not long abide in
itself), is creating changes of opinion of infinite
advantage to the great cause of international
copyright.

A little while ago we had the publishers petitioning
and declaiming against an International
copyright (I forget what arguments they employed),
and, lo! their breath is scarcely spent
when the ground slides from under them, and
the whole publishing business—at least, a considerable
section of it, which they meant to
uphold by false and hollow props—has tumbled
into chaos, and an organic change has passed
through the world of publication. Now they
begin—and we are glad to have so powerful
and so respectable a body converts to our side,
on whatever terms—to see the matter in a new
light. The affection for the people, and the
cheap enlightenment of the people and the people's
wives and children, which they made bold
(out of an exceeding philanthropy) to proclaim
in marketplaces and the lobbies of congress, is
wonderfully dwindled.

It is not a pleasant thing, after all, to have
one's printing-house and bindery burned to the
ground, even for so laudable an object. Suppose
we have the law; a little civilized recognition
of the rights of authors (merely by way
of clincher, however, to the absolute, primary,
and indefeasible rights of publishers) might be
an agreeable change from this barbarous system
of non-protection. The old plan, it must
be admitted, has its disadvantages. Let's
have the law. And here you may suppose the
hats of certain old, respected, and enterprising
publishers, to rise into the air, in a sort of fervor
or ecstacy, which it is entirely out of their
power to control.

Is there, or is there not, a property in a book—
a primitive, real, fundamental, right in its
ownership, as in any estate or property? Often
and clearly as this question has been determined,
the opponents of a law, by stress of argument,
are driven upon denying it over and over
again, and making use of every sort of ridiculous
and irrelevant illustration to crowd the right
out of the way. They fly into all corners of
creation in pursuit of an analogy, and come
back without as much as a sparrow in their
bag.

One of them, for example, says, “We buy a
new foreign book; it is ours; we multiply copies
and diffuse its advantages. We also buy a
bushel of foreign wheat, before unknown to us;
we cultivate, increase it, and spread its use
over the country. Where is the difference?
If one is stealing the other is so. Nonsense!
neither is stealing. They are both praiseworthy
acts, beneficial to mankind, injurious to nobody,
right and just in themselves, and commendable
in the sight of God.” This reasoner,
of a pious inclination, and most excellent

[figure description] Page 360.[end figure description]

moral tendencies, has made but a single error. He
thinks the type, stitching, and paper, are THE
BOOK! He forgets that when you buy a book
you do not buy the whole body of its thoughts
in their entire breadth and construction, to be
yours in fee simple, for all uses (if you did the
vender would be guilty of a fraud in selling
more than a single copy of any one work), but
simply the usufruct of the book as a reader.
Any processes of your own mind, exerted upon
that work or parts of it, make the result, so far,
your legitimate property, and is one of the incidents
of your purchase. To reprint the work
in any shape, as a complete, symmetrical composition,
is a violation of the original contract
between the vender and yourself; whether it
be in folio or duodecimo, in the form of newspaper
or pamphlet, there lies THE BOOK, unchanged
by any action of your own mind. The
wheat, of which you have purchased the bushel,
in the meantime, has been sown in your
field (there's a difference to begin), which has
been prepared by your plough and plough-horse
for its reception, the kindly dews and rains of
heaven, which would answer to the genial inspirations
and movements of the mind, in the
other case, descend upon it; it is guarded by
walls and hedges from inroad; the weeds and
tares which would fain choke it are plucked out
by a careful hand; at last it is reaped and gathered
in by the harvestman to his garners.

The one bushel has become a thousand; but
it has passed through a thousand appropriating
and fructifying processes, to swell it to that extent.
It has not been merely poured out of one
bushel-measure into another bushel-measure.

Though the one plough the earth, and the
other plough the sea, the world will recognise
a distinction, a delicate line of demarcation,
between farmer (man's first occupation) and
pirate (his last). The republishers—the proprietors
of the mammoth press—groan under
the aspersion of piracy and pillage laid at their
door. They complain of the harshness of epithet
which denounces them as Kyds and Mac
Gregors. They must bear in mind that authors
and republishers are likely to consider this question
from very different points of view; that
the poor writer, regarding himself as defrauded
of a positive right and of a property as real and
substantial as guineas, or dollars, or doubloons,
may feel a soreness, of which the other party,
living as he does on the denial of that
right and the seizure of that property, without
charge or cost, may not be quite as susceptible.
Let us make an effort to bring this
point home to these gentlemen, in an obvious
and intelligible illustration.

How would the worthy proprietors of “The
Brother Jonathan” like it, if, when their edition
of Barnaby Rudge or Zanoni had been carefully
worked off at some expense of composition,
paper, and press-work, and lay ready folded,
in their office for delivery; how would they
be pleased if just at that moment, when the
news-boys were gathered at the office door
pitching their throats for the new cry, a gang
of stout-handed fellows should descend upon
their premises and without as much as “by
your leave,” or “gentlemen, an you will!”
sweep the entire edition off—bear it into the
next street, and there proceed to issue and
vend it, with the utmost imaginable steadiness
of aspect; with an equanimity of demeanor
quite edifying and perfect. Why, gentlemen,
to speak the truth plainly, you would have a
hue-and-cry around the corner in an instant!
Your ejaculations of thief, robber, and burglar,
would know no pause till you were compelled
to give out for very lack of breath; and the
whole community would be startled, at its
breakfast the next morning by an appeal to its
moral sensibilities so loud and lightning-like,
that the coffee would be unpalatable and the
very toast turn to a cinder in the mouth.

Now it should be borne in mind that the
large weekly press, whose influence we are
anxious to counteract, and whose interest is
rapidly becoming the leading one in opposition
to the proposed law—has arisen since the agitation
of this question; has embarked its capital,
and has grown to its present power and
influence in the very teeth of a solemn protest
of the authors whose labors they appropriate.
It should also, in fairness, be added that some
members of this huge fraternity only avail
themselves of the law as it now stands, as they
think they have a right, and hold themselves
ready to abandon the field or adapt themselves
to the change whenever a new law requires it;
in the meantime meeting the question fairly
and reasoning it through in good temper. The
very paper which I have employed in illustration
is chargeable with no offence against literature,
society, or good morals, save the single
taint of appropriating the labors of authors
without pay, and defending the appropriation
as matter of strict right and propriety. Only
in a community where a contempt for literary
rights has been engendered by long malpractice
could such sentiments have obtained a
lodgment in minds of general fairness and
honesty.

If the hostility to a law of reciprocal copyright
be as deep-seated as is alleged, why has
there not been some able argument (raised
above sordid considerations and looking wide
and far upon the question in all its vast bearings),
expounding to us the grounds on which
this professed antagonism is based. When we
ask them for a syllogism they give us an assertion.
“My dear sir, how can you waste time,
perplexing yourself and the public with this
barren question! We supply readers with a
novel, a good 3 vol. novel, for a shilling; and
as long as we can do that they will remain
deaf to all your appeals. The argumentum
ad crumenam, the syllogism of the pocket, has
in all ages carried the sway!” This is the head
and front of their declamation, of their invective
and their facts. This is the fact! This boulder
(offered in lieu of bread), they beg us of the

[figure description] Page 361.[end figure description]

author-tribe to digest; this is their bulwark,
their fortress—no, their burrow rather—into
which they skulk at the approach of a poor
author, quill in hand, prepared to drive off the
game—feræ naturæ—that lay waste his preserves
and make free in his clover-field.

Now of all arguments this of Cheapness is
most questionable and unsafe. It has a comely
and alluring visage, is smooth-spoken and full
of promise, but we must have a caution where
it may lead us, for it is as full of trick and foul
play as a canting quaker; as precarious a foot-hold
as the trap of the scaffold the minute before
the check is slipped! Cheap and Good are
a pleasant partnership, but it does not happen
that they always do business together. Taking
cheapness as our guide and conductor, we can
readily make our way, in imagination, to a
publishing shop where the principle is expanded
into a pleasing practical illustration. The
shop is, of course, in a cellar (rent twelve
shillings a quarter); the attendant is a second-hand
man cast off from the current population
of the upper world into this depository (wages
four shillings a week); his hat, being still on
the cheap tendency has followed him out of
Chatham street, in company with a coat rejected
of seven owners the last of whom was a
dustman, vest to match and boots borrowed of
a pauper (cost of the entire outfit five shillings
and a penny); behind a counter that totters to
the earth at an expense of five pence or more
for repairs, he dispenses the frugal literature
of which he is the genius—the paper being of
such an exquisite delicacy and cheapness that
a good eye, by glancing through, may read
both sides at once; the purchaser plunges down
with a sixpence (most economical of small
coin) in his pocket, and bears off, in a triumphant
apotheosis, four-and-twenty columns, to be
read by the light of a tallow twopenny that sputters
cheapness as it burns. This is the glory
of the age; the crowning honor and triumph
of America. Who would have the heart or
the hardihood to blur that fair picture of popular
knowledge and cheap enjoyment? Why,
sirs, to speak a serious word or two in your
ear, this plea of cheapness—a miserable escape
at best, where a question of right and wrong
is concerned—pushed to its extreme (and as
cheapness is urged as the sole criterion and
measure of advantage we are warranted in so
doing) would drive literature to the almanac,
which can be afforded at a penny; and the age
of the brown ballad would return upon us in
all its primitive graces of an unclean sheet, a
cloudy typography, and a style of thought and
expression quite as pure and lucid.

Pass a copyright bill and we are told “we
should soon learn the difference between £1
10s. the London price of Bulwer's Zanoni, and
the American price of 25 cents.” How long—
it is also triumphantly asked—how long
would our “reading public almost commensu-rate
with the entire population continue at such
a rate?” What if it did not last a minute?
Truth and honesty are of a little more worth
than a reading public even as wide as the borders
of the land. Of the elevation of the
people—the instruction of the people—I hold
myself a friend, no man more, but I do not
propose to begin their enlightenment with a
new version of the decalogue, so amended as
to admit all the opposites against which it is
directed, as virtues which we are enjoined to
cultivate.

Suppose these gentlemen do furnish good
literature at a low price by dint of paying the
author nothing, they should bear in mind that
there is a place where it is paid for, or it would
most assuredly prove as miserable as it is cheap.
The literature is valuable not exactly because
they spread it before the world in large sheets
every Saturday morning, at sixpence a copy;
but because there happened to be in another
country certain enterprising publishers, of a
somewhat different stamp, who thought it worth
their while to cheer the writer in his labors,
by paying him a good round sum for his copyright.
I repeat it, an unpaid literature can not
contend with a paid one; nor can it—while
money is a representative of value and a motive
for exertion in all other pursuits—be as
good. Do I imagine then that an international
law will create great writers? Not at all.
Under any law—oppressed by whatever bondage
or tyranny custom chooses to lay upon
them—men of great genius will struggle into
light and cast before the world the thoughts
with which their own souls have been moved.
They will speak though mountains pressed
upon them. But there is a wide class—composing
the body of a national literature—who
can claim no such power; essayists, philosophers,
whose impulses are not great, periodical
writers, all are silent when the law and the
trade fail to befriend them. It is these that
need the constant stimulus, the genial inspiration
(denied to them in any great measure by
nature), of pay. It is the shining gold, decry
it as we may, that breeds the shining thought.

It may be asked how does this question affect
the press? The press, forming a part of the
great body of writers, is affected by whatever
affects the writers of books; for the bond by
which the entire brotherhood is held together
is so close that it can not be struck in any
part without feeling the shock in its whole
length. The same injustice by which the author
falls in station and place, drags down the
journalist. The rights of all who use the pen
are rights in common; varying only in degree
and as they may be affected from time to time,
by circumstances of the hour or day. Beyond
this the actual and immediate pressure of a
vast amount of reading from abroad, poured
upon us without limit or regulation, begins to
be felt by the daily and weekly press; they
find attention drawn off from the article or
political speculation in their own columns,
prepared with care and judgment, to the cheap
re-print; and are driven upon abandoning the

p265-365 [figure description] Page 362.[end figure description]

field or joining in a pernicious system of unpaid
appropriation against which their better judgment
revolts.

I now close this appeal, and in doing so I
would venture to urge upon you the importance
of concert and a steady action in behalf of
this law, at all times and in all places where
you are called on to employ that sacred instrument
of thought, whose immunities are so
grossly outraged.

The popular mind has, in this country, made
wonderful advances in the appreciation of political
truths and principles. There is no reason
why it should not make an equal—though,
perhaps, a later—progress in truths that relate
to literature and art. The popular mind, as
all our institutions require, is essentially just
and true; and, once enlightened by a sufficient
array of facts and with time to arrange and
digest them, will act with energy and wisdom
on this as on all other questions of which it is
the arbiter. Depend upon it, this bill, although
adversely regarded by your senate and representatives
at this time, will ultimately triumph.
It will go up to the senate-chamber, year after
year, with new facts, pleading for it with an
urgency which considerate legislators can not
resist. In the meantime it is your duty, as I
trust it is your desire, to enlighten the general
mind as to the truths on which I have ventured
to insist. Seize the instant. In town, in homestead
and city, let these principles be spread as
wide as the writings they would protect; and
search, with a fearless eye, the national heart,
to find whether there be not some kindly corner
where it is willing the seeds of a national
literature should be lodged. Speaking in the
accents of persuasion with which God and nature
have endowed you, and through the organs
of opinion which every one of you may,
more or less, command—you can not be long
resisted. Together in a phalanx, before which
kings and princes grow pale, enter upon the
mighty task. Hand in hand, voice answering
to voice, in tones of mutual trust and cheerful
hope press forward in the noble labor to which
you are summoned. That union which, in
politics and war, is strength, will prove in literaature,
as well, your champion and deliverer.

A Lecture delivered at the Lecture-room of the
Society Library, Feb. 2, 1843.

From the moment when the peak of Harvard
college, in New England, cut the sky—twenty
years only after the first permanent foot was
planted on the continent—America was predestined
to be a nation of readers. That early
promise and destiny she is amply fulfilling. She
reads in the cradle and the college; in the packet
and upon the highway. The doors of a thousand
lyceums are cast open and readers throng
in. She reads in the hut, the tavern, and the
stage-coach. She pauses at the corners and
reads again; and as the swift spirit of steam
snatches her from her feet and bears her away,
she still turns the page and reads what she can.
Her youth, her manhood, her age, are all busy
at the task. Her decrepitude and her strength,
her pale scholars and her carmen—sturdy and
gowned as well, are classmates in the common
pursuit. The forms are full wherever the eye
ranges; and the rustle of leaves, as they turn,
fills the air, from the schoolhouse on the edge
of Memphremagog to the deck that floats upon
the Mexican gulf.

It is therefore of vital consequence that she
read aright. Having no central standards of
opinion, no fixed classes as examples and guides,
her mind is the result of a constant intercommunication
of part with part, section with section,
through the press. The general sum of
her reading represents and controls her thoughts,
her habits, and her government. Her institutions,
modelled originally on the necessities of
her situation in place, time, and progress of
opinion, must be either sustained by a literature
(meaning by literature in this connexion,
whatever is circulated in a printed form) assimilating
with these, or be modified by another
literature which is too rigid to coalesce, and
strong enough to break in pieces and appropriate
to itself whatever it approaches.

It might happen, for a time, that the outward
form of government, and daily habit of action
would continue, while the mind, the heart, and
spirit, would be changed and strangered within.
A dreadful spectacle. A great nation staggering
on, by a sort of instinct, in its old paths,
blind, purposeless, maniacal! The body retaining
its springday vigor, lusty, full of an ambitious
strength; and yet, within, a mind at jar
with its powers—working through all the limbs
a deadly change, and giving to its aspect the
look of one who wanders in the dark, by the
edge of stormy seas, that may swallow him up,
or among enemies, whose cold shadow he feels
stealing upon him, to stab him if he pause.

The education of the American people lies,
after all, in what they read; the soul, that governs
its acts, enters through the eye that dwells
upon the printed page. Now, in its growth,
in the susceptible and plastic period of youth,
it should have a wise regard to the influences
to which it subjects itself; most of all to such
as steal upon it in silence and without warning
of their approach.

Out of the past come voices of triumph and
encouragement; in the future gleam eyes of
hopeful invitation and welcome; but the present,
the time that is upon us and about us, is
thick-set with dangers. A steady foot, a regard
fixed constantly upon the true lights and
standards of our course, can only carry us

[figure description] Page 363.[end figure description]

forward. We should not wander into other spheres,
into other quarters of the sky, to take an observation
of our path. Over our own home lies
the heaven to which we must look for guidance
and for omens.

As a great nation, standing in the very front
rank of the guides and examples of mankind,
America should desire to possess a literature,
whether foreign or native, only under the broadest
and clearest sanctions of right and justice.

Already it is whispered through the world
that she is false to the high faith she professes.
It is muttered from corner to corner of Europe
that she can violate, on the very spot made sacred
by many trials and sacrifices of an heroic
stamp, the clear obligations of man to man,
community to community. She owes it to herself
and to the great cause of which she is an
acknowledged representative, to stand forth,
and, gathering her pure robes about her, repel,
by instant action, aspersions so unworthy of
her faith and her fame. When I think of America,
as she should be, she always rises before
me a majestic personation—colossal, steadfast,
heavenward and noble in her look, and towering
infinitely above base usages and habitudes of
gross creatures. But when I regard her in some
of her acts, she seems shrunken from these
great proportions, crouched meanly upon the
earth, and peering, with a starved and guilty
Jook, among cinders and fragments for some
pittance, which she would fain clutch and guard
as a precious inheritance. It has been said that
England should place this question of the author's
right on the true ground before she
claims anything at our hands; that she should
recognise, as she has failed to, the perpetual,
indefeasible right of an author in his work, before
she demands any part of that right from
us. What matters it to us whether England
or all the world fail in justice, shall it stay us
in the path of truth and duty? We have not
withdrawn into this new world, far from the
strifes of old centuries, packed close with usage
and injustice, to be cumbered with the doings
or undoings of others. We are here, between
ocean and ocean, to lead a life as pure, to administer
examples as great, as God grants us
strength to render. If we are the first to restore
to an injured class rights long withheld, to place
the author upon his feet, to clothe him in the
garment that becomes his station and pursuit—
so be it! We can claim no higher honor, no
profounder glory, than to have so done.

A gentleman who has acquired distinction as
an historian, lately standing in a lecture-desk,
in this city, expressed a doubt whether there
could be a property or exclusive right in intellectual
and spiritual results. Thoughts and
ideas were of a part with the sun and air, as
free and universal as they. Now, it must have
been within that gentleman's knowledge, that
the sun and air themselves, when incorporated
in specific results, certain chymical compounds,
for example, can be subjects of property as clearly
as a hat upon one's head, or the house over
us. He must have known, also, as a wise and
diligent reader of scripture, that there are distinctions
of person and character, even among
the spiritual beings of a higher world, some being
ranged in classes and others known specially
by name. The very angels have an identity
of their own, in act and thought, over which
they may be supposed to exercise the control of
intelligent creatures. On this very truth, that
each creature, each angel, and each man, has
an individual property in whatever constitutes
his better being, hangs the immortality of the
soul itself. If thought were held in common
by all mankind, there could be, in effect, but
one man—one being with multiform limbs and
organs and a single soul, in possession of the
globe. It is in the doctrine of a personal identity,
an individual and exclusive right to certain
elements and issues of thought and feeling, now
and henceforward for ever, that the pains and
penalties, the hopes and alarms of a present
and a future being have their hold. This new
dream of the universal commonness of soul and
thought, would fill the universe with God and
void it of his creatures. One should have a
care, in indulging the speculations of so boundless
a philanthropy, upon what shoals he may
be driven! It may cost a greater outlay of
wind and sail to get back, than the original
chart of the voyage contemplated!

If I may throw open literary property to all
the world, why not all other property? If there
may be an allowable agrarianism of ideas, why
not of acres and tenements as well? What
would be the result if all the farms and estates
in America were to-morrow made common, we
can, in a measure, guess. There would follow,
as these very reasoners should know, a grand
disruption of society. I have a shrewd notion,
that the gentlemen who claim to have thought
out the author's book in common with him,
employing him only as secretary to the commission,
may be of the very lineage and creed with
those who claim as a right one eye of the author's
spectacles and one sleeve of his coat.
The world has not yet answered to itself in the
consequences, for the unjust distinction it has
chosen to make between the property of the
head and the hand. Not a slight part of the
disasters of kingdoms, in later times may, in
my humble judgment, be charged upon the unjust
and uncertain tenure by which authors and
governors of opinion have been allowed to hold
their rights, and the false conditions under
which they have, on this account, labored. The
world prospers best when to each man it allots
his right and protects him in it. Sooner or
later the right here, as always, will vindicate
itself.

I warn you, I warn you not to withhold this
law. There are portents already in the sky;
sounds, echoing audibly along the earth; voices
in the air, that tell us that the thoughts of
two nations can not mingle and become as one
without law, with impunity. The quick ear
catches the clashing of hostile opinions afar off

[figure description] Page 364.[end figure description]

the eye, strained anxiously upon the future,
discerns floating into the horizon a dark bulk
of alien thoughts, which, bearing down upon
its dear and deep-freighted hopes, with a shock
silently given, strikes them to the bottom and
rides smoothly over their wreck.

I do not deny, I would not be so understood,
that the noble literature of England, old and
new, introduced among us under the sanctions
of justice, and with a proper recognition of the
author's right, would be of eminent service to
the American people. We have arrived at a
point in the progress of the world, where it becomes
us to make use of every help, lawfully
within our reach, to sustain us in the position
we would maintain. What there is in that literature
to cheer, to enlighten, to move, and sustain,
the spirit of a great nation, no man here
need be told. Every footfall within its sacred
range, answers in an echo of proud remembrance;
every hand laid upon its records, returns
us from the leaves a musical and familiar
voice that binds us there. But if on every page
there lies spread the palm of the purloiner; if
in every path we encounter the face of the republisher
without right; if, at the bottom of
all, there lurks a wrong and an injustice, depend
upon it, so surely as the great heavens
are over us and the great rivers by our city-walls
flow to the sea, we will grow, truly, none
the wiser nor prosper the more, by every or any
English book that comes so branded to our
hands. It may be good, noble, lofty; may carry
us, seemingly to the very heart of truth, the
very heaven of all pure fancies; but while enjoyed
under these false conditions, all our profit
will, somehow or other, and according to an
everlasting law, turn to loss; all our progress
bring us back, through a blind round, to the
dull goal from which we set out.

To bring these considerations to bear upon
the immediate question of an international copyright,
I first remark, that an inevitable proof
that the present system of relying upon and
appropriating a foreign literature is false, lies
in the vast number of minor evils (which, like
the testimony of circumstances, can not err) to
which it gives birth.

What is the process by which in regulated
times and countries where the cheap enlightenment
of the people is not a theory of publishers,
a book is brought before the world? Not
assuredly in a spasm—such as nature gives
when she throws off her evil humors—but by
some kind of orderly procedure. The work
having grown up in the author's mind, slowly
and with a calm reliance, it might be hoped, on
a just judgment from his peers, is announced
as on its way to the public eye. Attention is
fixed upon it from that distance; if a work of
research, the studies of scholars and men of
letters are made to run parallel with it, and
when at length it is yielded to the world, it is
received with no idle and boisterous haste, but
becomes the subject of a close analysis and deliberate
opinion. At all points the author's
rights are regarded; having grown up under
the author's eye from the beginning, his fame
is well considered; and in the end the book
takes it place according to some standard of
judgment among others of its class. All this
is and has been from the earliest time reversed
in America. Here an author is an anomaly; a
needless excrescence of nature; a make-trouble
and mar-plot, a mere impertinence. A book is
supposed to grow up by some sort of spontaneous
process beyond the seas, and to be imported
into this country with rutabaga and the
yellow hop. Pursuant to this enlightened and
liberal view of the matter, there were established,
a good while ago, certain baronial castles,
keeps, and places of look-out, whence the respective
masters might look abroad, each
upon the domain he had engrossed. There
was the barony of Cliff-street on the one
hand, which included the Pelham vineyards,
the barony of Chestnut-street, Philadelphia,
which overlooked the Waverly manors, and
the Boston barony, with extensive water-rights
and rights of piscary (as the courts say) in
Marryat. Nothing could be more cheerful
than to see the various lord-heritors of these
great domains ascending to the castle-top, and
with a lordly and benignant eye, regarding the
toilers in their respective grounds so nicely
parcelled off.

“Ah, ha!” one of them would say; “see how
the sweat pours from old Sir Walter! That's
a sturdy old fellow, and the blades grow double
wherever he treads!”

The Post captain drags the net and ploughs
the sea quite as satisfactorily; and Sir Edward
Bulwer, being of a lighter build, makes up in
activity what he lacks in muscle. Could anything
go on more agreeably! Certainly not,
as long as these book-barons understand each
other; but every now and then they must have
a frisk (getting jolly on the good wine served
to them out of authors' skulls) and harry into
each other's fields with a vengeance! Then
there's a time! Such a crying out of courtesy
and lack of courtesy! Such a babblement of
rights and usages! Such a devout and monastic
horror of the infringement of publishers'
privileges all through Cliff street and Chestnut
and Washington, it makes one's blood run cold
to think of it! And among them all is heard
every once and a while the tenor of Sir Edward
Lytton, the piping cry of the Captain, or the
feeble voice of old Sir Walter, growing every
moment fainter, beseeching, in heaven's name,
to be thought of in all this fray to the amount
of a day's wages or two, and something to keep
the life in them while they are in the field!

Certainly, certainly, this is an anomalous
case for logicians of an ordinary understanding
and discernment to deal with. Here, it is alleged,
that the principals, the authors themselves,
have no rights whatever in the products
of their brain; yet, somehow or other, it happens
that their agents, factors, and underlings,
acquire through them and their labors some

[figure description] Page 365.[end figure description]

sort of rights about which all this pother of
usage and courtesy and publishers' privileges
is kept up! Why, it is as plain as the northstar,
nay, as plain as sun and moon, that if the
author was rightless in the premises, his subordinate
must be so cumulatively. No matter.
In the very midst of these difficulties there
came upon the field a gigantic fellow, who,
with great eyes that saw everything and swaggering
stride that trampled on everything,
(pausing only long enough to blow himself out
to his full dimensions) advanced, and in the
very style of the famous Welch giant, announced
that “Her could do that herself.” And so
it proved; he could not only do that, but a
great deal more. Instead of claiming a plot or
parcel of the country, this champion at arms
set up at once a right to the entire continent;
instead of addressing a note of compliment—
as the old barons occasionally would—to the
gentlemen beyond the water, asking to be allowed
to import their products, he cut the matter
short by laying violent hands on them before
they were well through the custom-house;
in fact, the blustering new comer went on at
such a rate that he fairly deafened and distracted
the old lords-heritors; and by the time a
year or two had gone by, they were driven to
their wits' ends.

Who knew but if he continued in this fashion
much longer he would have the very castles
down about their ears? What was to be done?
Why they must meet him in his own style of
windy bravado, and to save their towers from
coming down about their ears, and to keep him
at a respectful distance, they were compelled to
wrap them in flames—to break into them with
powerful burglars—in the newspapers, every
time a new consignment came to hand! Notwithstanding
their manful resistance, the giant
and one or two big brethren that joined him,
came after a while to have it all his own way.
He began to issue bulletins too—to warn trespassers
off of his premises, and to hold out to
the populace the promise of an unlimited vintage
from his orchards. Every week there
was open gate, when all the vassals and dependants
of the giant rushed in and were fed
at Sweeney's charges. The worst of it was,
this fellow was as full of tricks and balks as
an old horse; he baked portentous loaves it is
true, but then with a big knife that hung in his
hall, always ready for use, he served them such
slices and sections as he thought proper, expanding
or abridging the segment, according to
his whim; and all this was done with a racket.

Now, a book—the staple of the giant's dealings—
being a quiet creature, predestined to
hold a perpetual dumb intercourse with the
world, its birth might be expected to be orderly
and noiseless. On the contrary, its entrance
into this world at least is attended (under the
giant's auspices) with an outcry that a sultana
elephant, or tiger-mother of Bengal, panged
with young, might envy. The country is taken
by storm. The streets of cities are filled with
a flying squad of newsboys. Seaboard and
landward swarms with agents and outrunners.
The decks of steamboats, the pouches of mail-stages,
cars of railroads, swell with the baggage
of the invader. Flags and placards fly in
every direction announcing that the enemy has
landed. The city is harassed and kept for
nights sleepless by reason of the new troops
turned up in their ominous yellow or scarlet
uniform, quartered within their threshold.
Publishers, from a tranquil and slow-moving
people, grow suddenly excited, hurry-scurry
hither and thither, make yard-high announcements
in the newspapers and on the fences, of
impossibilities achieved or to be achieved by
them; and unless they attain a circulation of
fifty thousand, which gives them a glorious opportunity
to abuse the author and make good
their bank-account, would go out of the seven
precious senses (perhaps there's an eighth in
such cases) with which Heaven has endowed
them.

Now, I venture to doubt, with due respect
for the talent at appropriation and business enterprise
involved in these proceedings, whether
all this hurrah of literature is of much actual
service to the country. As a display of ingenious
jugglery by which an early copy is
landed and of physical force in hurrying it
through the press, no American can fail to regard
it with profound admiration. But when
one comes to consider that the work in question
may reach the printer's hands in the morning,
and the reader's at night of the same day;
that it may possibly contain (as does one of
these documents now before me) a careful and
deliberate assault on the doctrine of voting by
ballot and universal suffrage, or as does another,
an assertion that America is stocked
with white villains, or another, filled with a
variety of licentious delineations that I dare no
more than hint at, I confess, that I, for one,
can not exactly see that the gentlemen in question
are turning their talents to a very good account.
To be sure, they tell me that I am
an enemy to the enlightenment of the people,
a book aristocrat, entirely void of patriotic
ardor. So I am; if my ardor, my republicanism,
and my friendly disposition to enlighten the
people, can be turned to no better account than
this. But if, on the other hand, by some sort
of legerdemain of which I was master and
which I practised in connexion with the republication
of the works of foreign writers, without
remuneration to the author, I could transform
my disposition to enlighten into an annual
revenue of twelve or fifteen hundred dollars,
my republicanism into board and lodging, and
my patriotic ardor into an easy-running curricle,
hung low to the ground, I might perhaps
consent to come into this ingenious way of
viewing the thing. I might, under the over-whelming
logic of these circumstances, be willing
to convert my country on the one hand into
a sewer or deposite of all the cast off ribaldry
and dullness of the old world; or, on the

[figure description] Page 366.[end figure description]

other, into a great mill or mangle, where books
of a better sort should be tortured with an ingenious
cruelty, dislocated in every page, broken
and fractured in every paragraph, beaten
lifeless of all meaning and thrown upon the
world mangled and maimed, at the mercy of
every chance reader who has a shilling to bestow.
At the top of this I might, after pocketing,
or boasting to have pocketed on one of
these republished productions, the year's wages
of an honest man, I might turn upon my benefactor,
whose abject and miserable creature I
was (for I was fed from his hand), and call
him “knave,” “fool,” and “villain,” with a
volubility that could only be construed into
madness by a generous man. I might even, in
the plenitude of a genius for great and noble
obliquities, go a step beyond this; if I found
any fellow-countryman, one who had happened
by some great good or evil fortune to have
drawn the same breath with me, rising up, and
in the tone and accent of a man, denouncing,
without hope of interest or reward, with no unworthy
or ungenerous motive, all this as paltry,
unjust, and thankless, I might (having the
board and lodging, the annual stipend, and
the low-hung curricle still in view) proceed to
vilify and asperse that countryman by every
low art in my power; I might belie his acts,
misquote his writings, scorn his friends—I
might go even farther; I might ride from office
to office in my low-hung curricle, and entreat
various conductors of the public press in God's
name to do a little vilification in my behalf in
their respective daily, weekly, and monthly
organs of opinion! I might be spurned from
some, cowed down by a manly indignation at
others, or, perchance, have an unwilling welcome
lent at others. What then? There's my
low-hung curricle, my weekly allowance and
the board and lodging secured, and I would
even go on as I had begun. Nature having
denied to me the generous spirit of a brigand
or pirate of the main, I will be the tame villain
of civilized life, the slasher of native reputation,
the stipendiary slanderer of writers beyond
the sea!

This is the legitimate spawn of the republishing
system; and it is under such auspices
that a portion of the American mind is now
forming. All along the western border works
framed and issued by hands like this are scattered,
and make their way, unchecked by purer
influences. There, in many places, no native
author ever pleads the cause of his country—is
ever allowed the pure and great privilege of instilling
into the young heart fancies, or hopes,
or warnings, that have grown up in his own,
under the same free sky.

The evil spirit has there its undisturbed
sway! Are you willing that the public service
shall be employed in thus deadening and stupefying
one mighty limb of the general good?
Does it not occur to you that other seed should
be sown, other harvests gathered, than that
great field now receives and ripens? The
cause of one is the cause of all; and what
they derive of unmixed injury in their new estate,
we, in an elder condition, draw in, qualified,
but by no means neutralized. With them,
the false literature stands by itself, a single
growth; with us, it strikes down a better plant
that strives to lift its head.

No one will be hardy enough to deny, I think,
that American literature is virtually stifled under
the operation of such a system. God forbid
that I should not believe that great souls
may be born among us, still—equal to this or
any disastrous crisis—able to front it, and addressing
it in the tones of high and passionate
natures, bid it be stayed for a while. Men
who, in the face of disaster and suffering, and
the hard oppression of a country that knows
them not, and hears them not, by a slow and
generous toil, raise up images of greatness and
beauty in our midst, not recognised at first by
the bewildered eye, but whose silent presence
comes at length to be known and felt, and to
form a part of the national life. Others, who
people the common air with our fellow-citizens
of fiction, nobler than truth; and others, again,
who, masters of a divine patience, in silence
and amid dark discouragements, weave through
society and the disorders of a new and troublous
state, the threads of a true belief that
bind together and brighten all. These, God be
thanked! are so near akin to high spirits of
another sphere, that hunger nor thirst, nor the
keen wind can stay them from performing the
golden circuit on which they are bound—from
bearing the glad message they are charged to
deliver to mankind.

But it is of another and lower race that I now
make question; and I ask, where is the common
body of American authors to be found?
how are they employed?

I will not say in what cobwebbed lawyer's
dens; in what editorial cribs reeking and damp
with papers brought from far and wide, piled
to the very wall; on what high stools at bankers'
desks, the younger brood swarms and
makes trial of the daily quill; but of the acknowledged
and recognised tribe, whose names
run so trippingly from the tongue and form the
picturesque tail of the great paper-kite that
national self-love sends up from day to day.
With one or two exceptions, these refrain altogether
from bestowing upon the public regular
and complete works, books in one volume or
two, carefully elaborated, and claiming the
general attention by the patient genius with
which they have been wrought out. On the
contrary, they are discovered by whoever looks
for them, moving rapidly about among certain
painted booths—the fashionable magazines—
running in and out with their crisp bundles of
manuscript, and partaking of such hurried
hospitality as the master of the booth can
afford.

Sometimes they are placed at the head of the
table with a story in three courses before them;
others are thrust into a corner to mumble a

[figure description] Page 367.[end figure description]

sonnet; and others, again, ramble up and down
where they choose, regaling themselves out of
a neat paper of powdered maccaroni. One
gentleman, in other words, furnishes a most
moving and pathetic tale of a riband or a laceveil—
another, a light and airy poem of sentiment
about nothing; and, another, the delightful
history of Arthur Melton, and all his
agreeably common-place love passages with
the charming young lady heroine, Helen Edgecombe.

This is American literature; the literature
of one of the foremost nations of the earth;
the literature of a country that gave birth,
only a little while ago, to the man George
Washington, and issued the Declaration of Independence
to the world. Let no one suppose
I do not entertain a respect and admiration—
proportioned to their merits—for many of the
writers engaged in the fashionable magazines,
or that I would cast unnecessary censure upon
those at the head of the periodical publications
in question. They are all common sufferers in
an unhappy state of things.

For the evils of that system they may justly
point to the law and the public taste; for the
advances upon its earlier condition they may
take credit to themselves. But none of these
circumstances can shut from view the fact
that the active, immediate, current literature
of America, is to be found at this moment, in
certain popular magazines, fronted with fashion-plates,
and brought up at the rear with an
overwhelming array of authors' names, in capital
letters.

This is the condition of a province; of some
little, obscure petty state, ashamed to show its
head among nations, and capable of subsisting
on the very stalks and husks of literature. If
it be not an object with us to escape out of this
low flat, this Chinese garden of all that is petty
and absurd in letters; if we can dwell contentedly
there; and if the national energy and
dignity of character should fail to yield under
the accumulated evils of a system like this, we
may fairly count upon ourselves as a nation of
tranquil philosophic thinkers, destined to endure
for ever—an everlasting model of selfsatisfied
debasement to the world!

This can not, however, hinder the admission,
that this country is, in literature, at the present
time, a dependency of Great Britain. It has
every mark and characteristic of that servile
condition. In the first place it relies for its
very literature of amusement—which, if any,
should be self-supplied—on a distant country.
It pauses before it makes up its historical records
for the researches of hostile scholars. It
borrows the learning of antiquity through the
factorship of compilers, farther distant than
the seats and fountains of antiquity themselves.
It appropriates without credit, in many cases,
its fiction, in some its divinity, in others, its
learning; it imitates, without stint, the productions
it can not honestly rival. Wanting
in the healthy tastes of an original and produc
tive people, it selects, not infrequently, the
worst parts of the literature it appropriates.
It has on every and all of these accounts,
neither head, nor limbs, nor proper powers of
motion, but tumbles about upon the stage of
its existence a sort of idiotic monster, whose
purposeless look and gaping mouth, craving
everything, sets the looker-on into a roar. This
it is to be a province and appanage in literature;
and it is to this condition that we bind
ourselves by law.

Instead of this, what might we, reasonably,
have counted upon? Not a mature, harmonious,
complete literature; but works at least
spontaneous in their growth, and akin, in some
measure, to the life of man in a world full of
suggestive newness both to eye and spirit.
Rugged they might have been as the mountains
and cataracts among which they were produced;
mere ballads, echoing the cry of enemies withdrawing
into the shadow of the wood, or welcoming
the advent of the stranger-ship over
the rough sea-billow. Something of a lusty
strength—the vigor of a manly and rough-nurtured
prime—should have seized upon the
share and driven it a-field. A certain grandeur
of thought, a wild, barbaric splendor it
may have been, should have shot forth its fires
on every side, and made the wilderness to glow
in the forge-light of high passion and thoughts,
coultered to and fro with a giant's hand. Not
here—not here at least—should the soul of
man, in one of its noblest employments, have
shown itself cramped, servile, abject, and obsequious
to custom. Here, where the free
spirit lifts its head and speaks what it will, it
should have something more to say.

There are grounds, lying in the very depth
of our necessities, from which a hope arises
that our literature might have a peculiar force
and truth of its own. The very nakedness of
our new condition, depriving us of all aid from
the picturesque combinations of society, might
be reasonably expected to drive us upon a profounder
delineation of the inner life; the secret
of which seems to have been lost, with rare
and distant exceptions, with the great dramatic
writers. The number of our newspapers, read
so widely, and making known every particular
of actual life, would have a similar influence,
and compel our authors to a higher and profounder
exercise of inventive genius.

And here, too, should authorship, the writing
of books, be a noble pursuit. Claiming, as we
do, to be a nation of thinkers, it does not become
us to degrade the parents and guides of
opinion into an abject class. Recognising in
them the men who, by sagacious foresight and
a wise fancy, widen for us the great future upon
which we are entering, we should clothe
them in fair apparel and smooth their locks
with a considerate hand. Above all rank and
station, above presidencies and principalities,
should the men be raised, who cultivate and
raise up in us faculties of thought, and passion,
and will, before which all this show of house,

[figure description] Page 368.[end figure description]

and temple, and monument, dwindles to a purposeless
shadow. A government of opinion
lives in the soul of its authors and teachers.
Out of that alone it can draw its true life; and
beyond that, it holds its existence a prey to
swift confusion, to blood, and disorder, and angry
riot. Upon them, then, her best influences
should be shed; she should strive to spread
abroad through their path, peace, bounty, and
content, that her own way may partake of a
kindred calm.

What results, then, do I expect to flow from
the passage of a proper law?

I can not presume to predict, in detail, what
these might be, nor the exact form they may
assume. They will be, doubtless, great in number;
great, perhaps, beyond the sanguiue expectations
of its advocates. A single remark
would embrace, in effect, the purpose of all
I could say:—The spirit of wise legislation
would act like the creative law, breathing
truth and order among the elements of confusion.
It will reconcile, renew, separate, and
combine, so subtly, that no eye could foresee
all its operations. Among the expected changes
I would venture to mention:

Firstly; the entire reorganization of the
book-trade; at present, as I have shown, in a
great measure dismembered and broken. A
legitimate and honorable class of publishers
would spring up, to take charge as well of the
interests of the foreign author, having copyright
in this country, as of the domestic writer.
An increased interest in the writings of native
authors would, of course, be created; and
Amercan books would be placed before the
public in such form and through such channels
as to command their share of attention. The
relation of author and publisher would be restored
to something like its old conditions: elevated,
it might be hoped, by a more intelligent
spirit of dealing. Authors and publishers
both thrive best, when each can entertain
a friendly and respectful regard, on account of
accomplishments, toward the other, and feel
that they have earnest and noble interests in
common. The book-trade, as a business or
calling, would rise in dignity, and in its rise
would help to raise up literature itself. The
rule always holds, I believe, that a race of
high-minded publishers springs up contemporaneously
with great and popular writers.

Secondly; a greater productiveness in literature
here at home, and a greater unity in what
is produced. The false appetite engendered
and stimulated by the competition and shopcries
of the republishing press, once appeased,
many English works of light and worthless
character would grow stale on the ocean; and
being cast aside, American works, of a better
class and spirit, would take their place; the
public mind would have leisure allowed it to
discriminate, and the good works of domestic
origin would be fairly measured with books of
their own kind of English growth. The literature
of the country, freed from the irregular
and occasional character it derives from the
spasmodic effort it now costs author and publisher
to get each work before the world, would
move forward, with a steady march and a uniformity
of production, in each department to
which the national talent was directed. The
periodical literature of the country, freed from
the extraordinary predominance of foreign
works, brought before it for notice, constantly
jostling aside others of native growth, would
rise to a higher criticism and method of judging
works of art of all classes. The criticism of
the country, dealing at present, in great part,
with works from abroad, adopts a careless tone,
borrows from foreign journals, and fails to enter
upon the subject in the strict and careful
spirit it would take if it grew up, side by side
with the works it noticed.

Art, too, at present a sad sufferer, with its
kinsman, might be expected to awaken and
open its eyes once more upon an atmosphere
through which light and life began again to
move. Apart from its share in the general decay,
Art feels the evil influence of the incursions
of foreign genius without the regulations
of law. The incessant employment of native
skill in copying and reproducing, without limit,
the designs of foreign artists, would have a tendency
to breed a race of imitators, and to inspire
our efforts in this kind, with all the petty vices
that belong to a school of imitators. A disrespect
for genius would be engendered; a base
and low style of design and execution fastened
upon us; and to all these would be added
an unsparing spirit of plagiarism and foul play,
as regarded works designed and constructed
abroad. Restoring to the arts of design, as of
kin to literature, their just rights, the foreign
artist, as well as the foreign author, would enter
the field on fair terms, and would know that
he could protect his interests if he chose.

In the presence of a new and living literature,
such as belongs to this soil, much of the
criticism that now flies abroad and makes itself
clamorous at noonday, would skulk into darkness,
and, creeping into convenient retreats,
would screech and gibber unheard. The presence
of true standards, of manly examples of
criticism, and such would arise in a well-regulated
state of things, would awe into everlasting
silence the brood of maggot-pies, and buzzards,
and carrion vultures, that now obstruct
the light, and, spreading their obscene, chittering
wings before the eyes of the people, shut
the clear heaven from the view, and make them
believe that darkness is day, and little twilight-walkers,
grown men, perchance.

Thirdly; and this is the last I shall at present
refer to—the growth of a purer and better
tone of opinion at large. It can not be denied,
I think, that what may be called a certain
heroic unity of thought and act, which
marked this country at an earlier period, has
been impaired. A certain steadfastness, with
which the Republic once marched to its objects,
has been, somehow or other, invaded. I

[figure description] Page 369.[end figure description]

can not believe that the ancient spirit has entirely
died out.

The better mind of this country is, in many
of its best aspects, unrepresented. Overshadowed
by a foreign literature, it lurks underneath,
and would, in the course of time, be altogether
subdued. Nothing else can supply to
a country the place of a literature in maturing
and consolidating national opinion. At home
a literature is a constant presence, uniting all
parts and sections in a general bond. Abroad,
the country rises or sinks, seems imposing or
insignificant, in proportion to the front its literature
presents to the world. A certain vacillation
in the acts and sentiments of this
country seems to me attributable, in some
measure, to the want of counsel from mature
minds, living aside from political life, and capable
of breathing over the broad surface of the
land a spirit of profound knowledge and tranquil
truth. Any act by which a characteristic
literature was aided in its birth, would help to
steady opinion and to mature a consistent reliance
on men and truths here at home.

And now what is it withholds the instant
passage of a law, in pursuance of justice, the
sacredness of rights not to be gainsaid or argued
away, and our own better and nobler interests
as a nation of just men, given in some measure
to literature and the study of works of genius?
The future time, eager and fruitful, presses upon
us. If we were assured that we are at this moment
enjoying the highest selfish advantage,
from this system, there is no worthier time in
which to level it to the ground, and vindicate
ourselves by a great act of self-denial. Cheaply
are its fruits spread before us, it is true; what
the value of that cheapness is, I have endeavored
elsewhere to show. Cheap in its birth,
cheap in its reproduction, cheap in its tendencies,
cheap in its results, it is, in Heaven's
truth, if rightly regarded. Of its better part, I
venture to say, and in this view I think British
authors will concur, that in the event of the
passage of a law of International copyright,
they will be prepared to place their writings
before the American people at a price suited to
the character and extent of our reading community.
This will be their interest, and this,
I venture to predict their course. As for ourselves,
we will find in this, as in all other cases,
that a magnanimous performance of duty will
bring with it its own just reward.

The passage of an act of International copyright
will, it is asserted, tempt Britsh authors
to write expressly for the American market;
and this is counted upon as one of the injurious
results of a new law. Admit this conjecture
to be true, and what ensues? Admit that the
temptation of a wide and democratic community
of readers presents itself to the imagination
of the British author, and that, fired by the
prospect of great gain or the hope of a fame
echoing from Oregon to the Atlantic, he enters
upon the task of inditing books for the Ameri
can public, can we not understand that his
writings, to be acceptable to his transatlantic
readers, must address themselves to their republican
sympathies and hopes; that he must
treat of man according to this new experience
of ours; that he must speak of the American
future as full of promise to the awakened interests
of mankind. Will he, in the meantime,
being strong and powerful enough to
speak through the darkness and tempest of an
ocean, be unheard at home? Being in some
measure popular, will not the circumstance
that he lifts his voice to a kindred people over
the sea, call around him friends and adherents?
It will; and America, his great friend and patron
(according to this conjecture) will find in
him a republican champion on the very shore
of Britain, armed to fight her battles, to hold a
mailed parley for her right, and to cast before
her breast the invincible shield of a loyal defence.
A majestic hope certainly; and one
which the democratic believer, urged on by
whatever zealous belief he may be, should not
be in haste to obstruct.

What! a democratic thinker, one who looks
before and after for pasture for the eye, faltering
at the prospect of a long line of republican
writers springing up in the very heart of England
to vindicate his country and spread her
principles through towers, and huts, and huge
gabled factories, where he had despaired of
having the heroic voice of a free speaker ever
reach! It can not be that he would hug to
himself the treasure so lately dug from the
wilderness; that he would hoard and heap up
on this side of the Atlantic the massy ingots so
lately wrought out in bloody sweat and dinted
fields, beyond the grasp of his Saxon kinsman?

“Perish,” say we, “the base contracted selfishness
of such a principle.”

It will be, indeed, a proud thing for us to
render to the authors of a kindred people this
sacred obligation. If to this we can join
legislation on a broader and clearer ground
than has been yet occupied, recognising all
over the broad surface of the globe the indefeasible
and perpetual right of the author to
his labors, the benignant sun will shine on no
other people with a kindlier light.

This great, this permanent honor, is within
our reach. Oh, let it not, I beseech you, let it
not pass away! The step which bears you
forward to make you its master, will be an
angel's stride toward a higher and purer civilization
than the world has yet known.

I can not believe that the law-givers and
teachers of mankind must speak to us always from
amid the stifling airs of a distressed condition;
cold and shaken with the damps of penury;
uttering only in the intervals of pain and hunger,
the oracles by which the world is to be
guided and cheered onward, in its path of progress.
Vexed not always with pangs and the
contortions of a suffering frame must these
priests and poets of ours echo and answer the

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hopes and fears of their race. Something of
free sunshine—a sight of the wide and glad
horizon, undimmed by tears, a little of prosperity
at their hearth-stones, and generous justice in
the highways—must be granted them, ere their
full hearts can speak forth the truths resident
there. Not always bended, and broken, and
sick at heart, shall these prodigal children of
humanity be driven out to wander over the
world, feeding where they can, dropping the
seeds of immortal truth on the wayside and by
chance: but raised up, inspired anew by a return
to the right of their race, the right to
possess and enjoy their own, they shall come
back to us a glorious company, radiant with
hope, and strong in the power to do good!