works without in the slightest degree interfer- engaged and persevered in literary labours ing with the public good." Dr. James Thom-less with the expectation of producing speedy son, the Professor of Mathematics in the Uni- effect than with a view to interest and benefit versity of Glasgow, states the nature and mankind remotely, though permanently, his history of several elementary works, the pro- works, though never out of demand, have made ducts of his labour, which are slowly beginning their way slowly into general circulation;" to recompense him, and especially invites and he states as a fact, directly bearing on this attention to the manner in which the law bears question, that his works have, within the last on works used as text-books in schools and four years, brought a larger emolument than universities, having to contend against the in all preceding years; which would now be partialities of teachers for books with which bounded by his death; and the greater part of use has made them familiar, and of booksellers which, if he had died four years ago, would for works in which they are interested, and have been wholly lost to his family. How will which may only begin to obtain attention this case be answered? I suppose, as I have when the copyright is about to cease. Sir heard it, when less fully stated, answered David Brewster has spent a most laborious before, that it proves that there is no necessity and most useful life, and still spends it, in the for the extension of copyright, because without composition of works which at once instruct its encouragement a poet thus gifted has been and charm, and which can only remunerate ready to devote his powers amidst neglect and him by the extension of the term. Now, I ask, scorn to the highest and the purest aims. I is there no property in these petitioners worthy will not answer by merely reminding those who of protection? No," said, and will say, some urge this ungenerous argument, that there may of the opponents of this bill; "none. We not always be attendant on such rare endowthink that from the moment an author puts his ments the means of offering such a sacrifice, thoughts on paper and delivers them to the either from independent resources or from world, his property therein wholly ceases." simple tastes. I reply at once, that the arguWhat! has he invested no capital? embarked ment is at utter variance with the plainest no fortune? If human life is nothing in your rules of morality and justice. I should like to commercial tables-if the sacrifice of profes- hear how it would be received on a motion for sion, of health, of gain, is nothing-surely the a national grant to one who had fought his mere outlay of him who has perilled his fortune country's battles! I should like to hear the to instruct mankind may claim some regard!¦ indignation and the scorn which would be exOr is the interest itself so refined-so ethereal pressed towards any one who should venture ―that you cannot regard it as property, because to suggest that the impulses which had led to it is not palpable to sense as to feeling? Is heroic deeds had no respect to worldly benefits: there any justice in this? If so, why do you that the love of country and glory would protect moral character as a man's most pre- always lead to similar actions; and that, therecious possession, and compensate the party fore, out of regard to the public, we ought to who suffers unjustly in that character by withhold all reward from the conqueror. And damages? Has this possession any existence yet the case of the poet is the stronger; for we half so palpable as the author's right in the do not propose to reward him out of any fund printed creation of his brain? I have always but that which he himself creates-from any thought it one of the proudest triumphs of pockets but from those of every one whom he human law that it is able to recognise and to individually blesses-and our reward cannot guard this breath and finer spirit of moral be misapplied when we take Time for our action-that it can lend its aid in sheltering Arbitrator and Posterity for our Witnesses! that invisible property which exists solely in the admiration and affection of others; and if it may do this, why may it not protect his interest in those living words which, as well observed by that great thinker, Mr. Hazlitt, are, "after all, the only things which last for ever?" From these examples of works of labour and pecuniary outlay, I turn to that of a poet, whose name has often been mentioned in the discussion of this measure, who has supported it by his published opinion, but who has now, for the first time, enforced it by petition. Mr. Wordsworth states that he is on the point of attaining his seventieth year; that forty-six years ago he published his first work, and that he has continued to publish original works at various intervals down to 1835. The copyright in a considerable part of these works is now contingent on his life; in a few years the far larger portion of them will be holden by the same tenure; and his most extensive and elaborate work, "The Excursion," will be in this condition, if he should be spared for four years longer. He represents that "having It cannot have escaped the attention of the house that many of the petitioners are professors in the universities of Scotland; and from the laborious nature of their pursuits--their love of literature, fostered at a distance from the applause of the capital, and from the independence and the purity of their character, I venture to think that their experience and their judgments are entitled to peculiar weight. Now, the University of St. Andrew's, after powerfully urging the claims of authors generally, thus submits the peculiar claims of their countrymen :-"Your petitioners venture to submit, that in Scotland, where the few rewards which used to be conferred on clergymen of literary and scientific merit have been withdrawn, and where the incomes of the professors in her universities have been allowed to suffer great diminution, these individuals have strong motives to solicit, and additional grounds to expect, that their literary rights may be extended, and rendered as beneficial as possible to themselves and their families." Among these professors, and among the petitioners for this bill, is a clergyman unsurpassed in Christian eloquence, in reach of thought, in unwearied zeal; who has disregarded ease and intellectual delights prodigally to expend his energies on that which he regards as the sacred cause of the church and religion of his country; and who depends on his copyrights, in such of the labours of his mind as he has committed to the press, to make amends for a professional income far below his great intellectual claims. In addressing me on the subject of this bill, Dr. Chalmers says, "My professional income has always been so scanty, that I should have been in great difficulties, had it not been for my authorship; and I am not aware of a more desirable compensation for the meagre emoluments of the offices I have held, than that those profits should be secured and perpetuated in favour of my descendants." And who among us, not only of those who sympathize with his splendid exertions on behalf of the church of Scotland, but of all who feel grateful for the efforts by which he has illustrated and defended our common faith, will not desire that wish to be fulfilled? How one of the publishers of his country feels towards such authors may be seen in the petition of Mr. Smith, of Glasgow, who even desires to limit the power of assigning copyright to twenty-one years, and then contrasts his case with that of those by whose creations he has been enriched. He states, "that he has obtained estate and competence by the sale of books published or sold by him, which property he has a right to entail or give in legacy for the benefit of his heirs; while the authors who have produced the works that have enriched him have no interest for their heirs by the present law of copyright in the property which they have solely constituted." When I find these petitions signed by the most distinguished ornament of the Scotch church, Dr. Chalmers-and by one of the most eminent among the Dissenting divines, Dr. Wardlaw, I cannot help associating with them a case which came under my notice a few days ago, on an application to me to assist a greatgrandson of Dr. Doddridge, in presenting a memorial to the bounty of the crown. Here was the descendant of one of the idols of the religious world, whose works have circulated in hundreds of thousands of copies, enduring a state of unmerited privation and suffering, from which a trifle on each volume of his ancestor's works now adorning the libraries of the wealthy Dissenters would amply relieve him! On these contrasted cases the House has now to decide. But before I leave the question in its hands, it is fit I should advert for a moment to those opponents of the bill who, disclaiming the publishers and printers, appear on behalf of what they call the public, and who insist that it is our duty to obtain for that public the works of genius and labour at the lowest possible price. Now, passing over a doubt, which I dare scarcely hint in their presence, whether the diffusion of cheap copies of any work necessarily implies in an equal degree the diffusion of its beauties or the veneration of its injunctions, permit me to ask whether even for the public it is not desirable that works should | be correct as well as cheap, and that it should have the benefit of the matured judgment of its instructors? Now, this can only be effected by permitting the family of the author to watch over his fame. An author who, in a life devoted to literature, has combined gifts of the historian and the poet-Mr. Southey-who has thought the statement of his case might have more effect than a petition, has permitted me to elucidate this view of the case by his example. He has lately published a complete edition of his poems, correcting the blemishes which during many years have presented themselves to his severer judgment; his copyrights in many of the original poems will expire with his life; in the corrected edition his family will enjoy an interest, but in the original poems they will retain none; and it will be in the power of Mr. Tegg, or any other of those worthy benefactors of the public who keep duteous watch over the deathbed of copyrights, to republish any of those poems with all their repented errors, and the addition of those gross blunders which are always introduced when a reprint undergoes no revision but that of a printer. But is it even certain that the books thus carelessly printed will be actually cheaper in price than if the descendants of the author published them for their own advantage? It is not fair to judge of this by recent instances, produced in the first eagerness of the freebooters of the trade to seize on and parade their spoils. It should be recol|lected that a proprietor who uses only one machine for publication may, with profit to himself, supply the market more cheaply than numbers who have separate expenses, and look for separate gains. But if the argument be doubtful, the fact at least is clear, and I may call the honourable member for Finsbury as my witness to prove it; for he has shown in this House, to the offence of none, but the amusement of all, and to the proof of my case, how cheaply books charged with an expensive copyright may be obtained of his friend Mr. Tegg, who, he states, nevertheless, has a stock worth more than 170,000, which, if the principles of my opponents be fairly applied, is justly distributable among their favourite and much injured public. But grant the whole assumption-grant that if copyright be extended, the few books it will affect will be dearer to the public by the little the author will gain by each copy-grant that they will not be more correct or authentic than when issued wholesale from the press; still is there nothing good for the people but cheap knowledge? Is it necessary to associate with their introduction to the works of the mighty dead the selfish thought that they are sharing in the riot of the grave, instead of cherishing a sense of pride that, while they read, they are assisting to deprive the grave of part of its withering power over the interests of survivors? But if it were desirable, is it possible to separate a personal sympathy with an author from the first admiration of his works? We do not enter into his labours as into some strange and dreamy world, raised by the touch of a forgotten enchanter; the affections are breathing around us, and the author being dead, yet speaks in accents triumphant over death and time. As for its main object to relieve men of letters from from the dead level of an utilitarian philosophy no mighty work of genius ever issued, so never can such a work be enjoyed except in that happy forgetfulness of its doctrines, which always softens the harshest creed. But I believe that those who thus plead for the people are wholly unauthorized by the feelings of the people; that the poor of these realms are richer in spirit than their advocates understand them; and that they would feel a pride in bestowing their contributions in the expression of respect to that great intellectual ancestry whose fame is as much theirs as it is the boast of the loftiest amongst us. I do not believe that the people of Scotland share in the exultation of the publishers who have successively sent among them cheap editions of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," and the "Lady of the Lake;" that they can buy them at a lower price than if the great minstrel who produced them were still among the living. I cannot believe that they can so soon forget their obligations to one who has given their beautiful country a place in the imagination of mankind which may well compensate for the loss of that political individuality they so long and so proudly enjoyed, as to count with satisfaction the pence they may save by that premature death which gave his copyrights to contesting publishers, and left his halls silent and cold. It is too late to do justice to Burns; but I cannot believe the peasant who should be inspired by him to walk "in glory and in joy, following his plough by the mountain side," or who, casting his prideful look, on Saturday evening, around his circle of children, feels his pleasure heightened and reduplicated in the poet's mirror, would regret to think that the well-thumbed volume which had made him conscious of such riches had paid the charge of some sixpence towards the support of that poet's children. There is only one other consideration I would suggest before I sit down, which relates not to any class, but to the community and our duties towards them. It is thus expressed in Mr. Wordsworth's petition:-"That this bill has the thraldom of being forced to court the living generation to aid them in rising above slavish taste and degraded prejudice, and to encourage them to rely on their own impulses." Surely this is an object worthy of the legislature of a great people, especially in an age where restless activity and increasing knowledge present temptations to the slight and the superficial which do not exist in a ruder age. Let those who "to beguile the time look like the time," have their fair scope-let cheap and innocent publications be multiplied as much as you please,-still the character of the age demands something impressed with a nobler labour, and directed to a higher aim. "The immortal mind craves objects that endure." The printers need not fear. There will not be too many candidates for "a bright reversion," which only falls in when the ear shall be deaf to human praise. I have been accused of asking you to legislate "on some sort of sentimental feeling." I deny the charge: the living truth is with us; the spectral phantoms of depopulated printinghouses and shops are the baseless fancies of our opponents. If I were here beseeching indulgence for the frailties and excesses which sometimes attend fine talents—if I were here appealing to your sympathy on behalf of crushed hopes and irregular aspirations, the accusation would be just. I plead not for the wild, but for the sage; not for the perishing, but for the eternal: for him who, poet, philosopher, or historian, girds himself for some toil lasting as life-lays aside all frivolous pursuits for one virtuous purpose-that when encouraged by the distant hope of that "All-hail hereafter," which shall welcome him among the heirs of fame, he may not shudder to think of it as sounding with hollow mockery in the ears of those whom he loves, and waking sullen echoes by the side of a cheerless hearth. For such I ask this boon, and through them for mankind and I ask it in the confidence with the expression of which your veteran petitioner Wordsworth closed his appeal to you-" That in this, as in all other cases, justice is capable of working out its own expediency!" THE WESTMINSTER PLAY. NoT from the youth-illumined stage alone Is gladness shed; it breathes around from all Worn eyes with childlike tears; for Memory lifts Time's curtain from the spirits' holiest stage, And makes even strangers share the precious gifts THE END. |