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Nevertheless, of this heinous and unnatural conduct there have been too many instances, including a couple within the last few months. In the first case, a piracy was committed by a Firm not the least active in the opposition to the Bill of Sergeant Talfourd, and who, of course, held the poacher-like principle that the proper time for a copyright to expire was whenever they chose to kill it. The other party alluded to, once went so far as to assert to me that an author would not receive more, but less, for a longer term in his works—a declaration attributed at the time to mere natural blockheadism; but his theory of literary rights has since been illustrated by an injunction obtained against him by a brother bookseller, for pirating some popular metrical legends. Now in what but the pseudo-respectability of a doublefronted shop in Cornhill does this publisher rank above a man whom he would no doubt have designated as a little, low, dirty, shabby library-keeper in the suburbs, to whom I one day happened to mention a placard in a neighboring shop-window announcing a spurious "Master Humphrey's Clock."

"Sir," said the little, low, dirty, shabby library-keeper, "if you had observed the name, it was by Bos, not Boz-S, Sir, not Z; and, besides, it would have been no piracy, Sir, even with the Z, because Master Humphrey's Clock, you see, Sir, was not published as by Boz, but by Charles Dickens."*

These lax principles of our domestic pirates are not at all braced by a passage across the Atlantic. In America the system has reached its climax, and the types, used on a new work here, are only the antetypes of a reprint in Boston, Philadel phia, or New York. Of this, a flagrant example has recently occurred in the republication of Sir E. Bulwer's last new novel, “Zanoni,” in a newspaper form, at the rate of ten copies for a dollar! In fact, as to natural rights, in the States there appear to be two classes very much on a par—our read men and the Indians.

It may be as well for me, before commenting on such transactions, to disown any prejudice, personal or political, against America or the Americans. I am none of the "Mr. H's" who have drawn, sketched, or caricatured them. The stars and

* Fact.

stripes do not affect me like a blight in the eye; nor does "Yankee Doodle" give me the ear-ache. I have no wish to repeal the Union of the United States; or to alter the phrase in the Testament into "Republicans and Sinners." In reality, I have rather a Davidish feeling towards Jonathan, remembering whence he comes, and what language he speaks; and holding it better in such cases to have the wit that traces resemblances, than the judgment that detects differences, and perhaps foments them.

It is, therefore, to gratify no private spleen, spite, or jealousy, that my voice is raised against a system which has been condemned by some of the wisest and most distinguished of her own sons as prejudicial to the dignity and best interests of America -men, who do not care, perhaps, to see their Gog of a country indebted for all its prose and poetry to little Great Britain, just as the jolterheaded Giant at the gate of Kenilworth Castle was dependent for his literature on the dwarfish imp Flibbertigibbet.

And truly gigantic is Jonathan in his material works, and extra-fast in his physical progress; but will he really be satisfied with going ahead in everything but that in which the head is so distinguished an agent? He is first chop with the hatchet, and a crack with the rifle,-grand at a 'coon, mighty at a 'possum, and awful at a squirrel,—he can drive a nail with a bullet, or a bargain with a Jew pedlar,—whip his weight in wild cats,* grin Jesuit's bark into quinine, and, as some say, wring off the tail of a comet,—but where will be his exploits with the pen ? Will he resemble or not the big Ben of the school, a dab at marbles, a first-rater at cricket, a top-sawyer at fives, and a good-’un at fisticuffs, but obliged to be obliged for his English themes and exercises to the least boy on the form? The picture is a mortifying one; but in some such character must Jonathan necessarily figure, if he consents to be a mere interloper-a Squatter, instead of a settler, in the Field of Letters.

That America, in the absence of an International Copyright, can never possess a native literature, has been foretold by the second-sighted on either side of the Atlantic. Indeed, accord

* "Phoo! phoo!” said an old Anglo-Indian, in reference to this boast; "I can whip my own weight in elephants."

ing to Mr. Cornelius Mathews, in his speech at the public dinner given to Dickens at New York, the barren time is already come, and the field of letters, in the States, scarcely produces a prose thistle or a poetical dandelion. It would hardly feed a Learned Pig. Such must be the inevitable result of the republication of English works on a scale that totally precludes any native competition; and whatever may be the feeling of the trading partners, I can imagine nothing more mortifying to the spirit of a liberal, accomplished, and patriotic American, than to sit in his study, under a framed and glazed "Declaration of Independence," and to look at a Family Library, well stored indeed with books, but of which nothing save the paper and the covers are of home manufacture.

Of the character of the traffic there can be no doubt. No honorable man would wish to obtain mental food, any more than his bodily victual, without fairly paying for it. It makes no difference that the supply comes from another country; for who would object to pay his tradesman's bills on the plea that his American apples, his Ostend butter, and his French eggs, were of foreign production? Nor does it matter that the acquisition is not exactly so tangible as upholstery; it is as irregular to have your head furnished as your house at the expense of your neighbor.

But these are the consumers. As to the purveyors, they are precisely on a par with the remarkable cheap traders, who stole ready-made brooms. They are not liable, it is true, to any legal penalty; but a severe punishment is awarded to a very similar offence. According to the comity of civilized countries, the national flag virtually protects not only the aggregate people, but every native individual-the British subject at Baltimore or Boston as much as the cockney in Cheapside. Even so the copyright of an English work attaches to the solitary copy that finds its way to New York as much as to the 1499 which remain in the dominions of Queen Victoria. It is a single bank note, but of a large issue; and its multiplication by spurious copies, particularly for circulation in our empire or its colonies, is surely as nefarious as the forgery of our "flimsies." The analogy is undeniable: and as the wholesale counterfeiting

of a paper currency has only been practised heretofore between nations at war, it is incumbent on the Congress of a country with which we are at amity to put a stop to such hostilities.

And here, pray note, how a Perpetual Copyright, as I formerly stated, might be defended with a better grace from invasion from abroad. Indeed, if foreign piracy have any plea in extenuation, it is the evil example of the statute of 1709, which first put a boundary line to our possession. Jonathan is a great calculator, and may calculate that space as well as time may nullify a copyright; and to be candid, there is no very clear reason why it should not. To me it appears that 28 degrees of latitude might as justly and rationally alienate a property as 28 years of longitude; that my right may as consistently depart from me in a steamboat as in a calendar; and of the two, the Great Western seems the most tangible conveyancer. As to any work above 23 years old, its reprinting by Americans or New Zealanders can be no transgression. On No Man's Land there can be no trespass; where there is no right there can be no infringement; there can be no piracy, for there is no copyright, that which was called so being dead and gone; not transferred like other property, but annihilated; not a dormant title, but extinct. As a consequence, in a couple of months, every printer in the United States will have, legally, as much right and interest in Waverley as the son and heir of the immortal Novelist.

There is another injury, however, with which our authors are threatened besides reprinting, namely, translation,—not from English into American, for there is no such tongue, but from the language of a Monarchy into that of a Republic. Yes; our writers are actually to be done into Locofocos, Nullifiers, Federalists, Democrats, Sympathisers,-nay, perhaps, into Horse Alligators and Yellow Flowers of the Forest, according to the taste of the province in which they may be reprinted, or the predilections of the republisher! In fact, American editions are to represent in spirit, as well as in form, American impressions!

This transmogrification is plainly alluded to in the following paragraph of a Memorial to Congress got up at a meeting of

publishers, printers, &c., at Boston, in April last, Mr. Goodrich, alias Peter Parley, in the chair:

"We would also suggest another point of vital import. If English authors obtain copyrights upon their works here, and our markets are supplied with them, it is apparent that having no power to adapt them to our wants, our institutions, and our state of society, we must permit their circulation as they are. We shall thus have a London literature forced upon us, at once driving our own out of the field, and subjecting the community to its influence. So long as we have power over it—so long as we can shape it as may suit our taste and condition, we have nothing to fear; but when this privilege is taken away, and the vast preponderance of British capital has driven our own out of the trade, shall we not have in our bosom a power at war with our institutions, and dangerous to our prosperity? Is it not safer and better to let in this literature freely, but subject to the moulding of our wants and wishes, rather than to give it an ascendency, and entrench it behind the inviolable privilege of copyright ?"

And that there may be no doubt about the meaning of the memorialists, hear Mr. Cornelius Mathews:

"I have said nothing-and I might have said much-of the mutilation of books by our American republishers-that outrageous wrong by which a noble English writer, speaking truths in London, dear to him as life, is made to say in New York that which his soul abhors!"

I am not aware of the exact tinge of the Boston complexion; but, whether pallid or rubicund, golden or brazen, was there no cheek capable of a blush at the reading of such a precious document! Did Mr. Goodrich-himself a writer-and a moralist for children-did Peter Parley feel no misgivings as to the propriety or fairness of casting the brains of English authors into American moulds and shapes, with as little ceremony as so much jelly? Is there no turpitude in the falsification of writings because they happen to be not in manuscript, but in print? On the contrary, the most dishonorable of misrepresentations is to make a man misrepresent himself, by attributing to him expressions he had never uttered, or principles he

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