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 Chinaman 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 presenti, but also, by a decisive blow, to further the good principle, that there should be no roast pig (nor 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 cannot 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 convert 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 market-places and the lobbies of Congress, is wonderfully dwindled.
It isn’t 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 ecstasy, 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 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 mean time 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 recognize 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 MacGregors. They must bear in mind that authors and republishers are likely to regard this question from very different points of view: that the poor writer, regarding himself as plundered, 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 editions 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 newsboys 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 over 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 this 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 mean time, 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 mal-practice, could such sentiments have obtained lodgment in minds of general fairness and honesty.
If the hostility to a law of reciprocal copyright be as deep rooted 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 three-volume novel, for a shilling; and as long as we 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 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 foothold 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 seven 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, trowsers 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, can 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 with all its primitive graces of an unclean sheet, a cloudy typography, and a style of thought and expression quite as pure and lucid.