74 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Where American republishes negotiate 

 with the foreign owners of books, and 

 pay them for the liberty of reprinting, 

 there is of course no piracy, and there 

 has been an increasing tendency in re- 

 cent years on the part of American re- 

 publishers to recognize the foreign au- 

 thor s ownership of his book, and to 

 pay him for it. But, while this prac- 

 tice has been growing on the part of 

 reputable publishers, so as to have be- 

 come a rule with many of them, another 

 class has come into the field who scout 

 all notions of authors' rights, and re- 

 print everything they can get hold of 

 and make a profit on. These are not 

 shop-lifters, or burglars, or highway- 

 robbers, or horse-thieves, but they are 

 book-thieves : they steal literary prop- 

 erty by pirating the works which they 

 have not paid for and which do not be- 

 long to them. 



But an objection will be raised here 

 an American objection and, if an 

 American dictionary is consulted, it 

 will be found that piracy is defined as 

 an " infringement of the law of copy- 

 right by publishing the writings of other 

 men without permission." Therefore, 

 it will be said, American republishes 

 break no law, and are, therefore, not 

 pirates. The escape is but technical; 

 the moral quality of the transaction re- 

 mains, and only where the moral sense 

 has been bedeviled, so that men are in- 

 sensible to the intrinsic nature of the 

 act, will any such pretext be urged. The 

 foreign author has a copyright by law, 

 and we recognize that copyright by law 

 is in itself a righteous thing. If he can 

 not extend the law as far as his books 

 are demanded, it is no fault of his ; he 

 has done everything in his power to 

 protect his own rights. His books are 

 stolen by our publishers, and they quib- 

 ble that they are not pirates because 

 there is no American law against such 

 literary theft. But this changes nothing 

 in the essential nature of the transac- 

 tion ; it only shifts the responsibility. 

 If our thieving publishers are not pi- 



ratical, it is because the Government 

 gives them a technical relief from the 

 charge by itself assuming the odium. 

 If the publishers sneak behind their 

 Government to shelter themselves from 

 an opprobrium, then the opprobrium 

 must be fastened upon the Government. 

 The wrong is committed in its most 

 deliberate and aggravated form, and if 

 we have not "Piratical Publishers" then 

 we have a piratical Government. There 

 is no blinking the scandalous fact ; and 

 the responsibility of it must rest some- 

 where. When a whole class of men 

 are engaged in open, systematic, and 

 extensive stealing appropriation to 

 themselves, without payment or con- 

 sent, of property not their own if the 

 state abets them in the practice by re- 

 fusing to forbid it, the state is entitled 

 to all the execration demanded by the 

 crime. The attitude of the American 

 Government on this question is a re- 

 flection upon the national character in 

 the eyes of the civilized world. We 

 may meet this with brazen-faced assur- 

 ance, and twaddle about the dissemi- 

 nation of cheap information among the 

 people, but we can not divorce cause 

 from effect in the political any more 

 than in the physical world, and the con- 

 sequences of perpetuating a great na- 

 tional injustice will tell with infallible 

 certainty in the degeneration and deg- 

 radation of the national character. 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Facts and Phases of Animal Life, inter- 

 spersed with Amusing and Original An- 

 ecdotes. By Vernon S. Morwood, Lec- 

 turer to the Royal Society for the Pre- 

 vention of Cruelty to Animals. New 

 York: D. Appleton & Co. Pp. 286. 

 With Engravings. Price, $1.50. 



The author has endeavored to describe, 

 especially for the young, in simple lan- 

 guage, the marvelous organization, the in- 

 stinct, memory, sagacity, and inventive fac- 

 ulties of some of the more common animals 

 and insects. He has also made a prominent 

 presentation of the fidelity, love, affection, 



