Pass a copyright bill and we are told, “we should soon learn the difference between £1 10, the London price of Bulwer’s Zanoni, and the American price of twenty-five cents.” How long—it is triumphantly asked—would our “reading public, almost commensurate 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 your 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 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 cannot contend with a paid one; nor can it—while money is a representative of value and a motive of exertion—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—comprising 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 cannot 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 reprint; and are driven upon abandoning the 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 cannot resist. In the mean time 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 cannot 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 Literature, as well, your champion and deliverer.
CORNELIUS MATHEWS.
New York, June, 1842.
THE APPROACH OF AUTUMN.
But late the song of reaper