658 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ure to say that, when American books shall be as popular in England 

 as English books are in the United States, copyright will no longer be 

 withheld. 



It will doubtless be urged that I am placing our government in an 

 unenviable light ; that selfishness and not right rules its conduct. I 

 answer that all governments, under like conditions, would pursue a 

 similar course. Great Britain may arrogate to herself national lib- 

 erality for having opened her ports, with little or no restriction, to 

 the commerce of the world ; but the motives which prompted such 

 liberality were as purely selfish as were those of the United States in 

 fettering commerce by her high tariff. Great Britain, assured of her 

 supremacy as the great manufacturer of the world, did not fear the 

 competition of other manufacturers, whether protected or not ; and 

 she became, at once, the advocate and the exemplar of free trade, 

 believing that other nations would reciprocate, and thus give greater 

 encouragement to the commerce in which, as a nation, her chief in- 

 terest lies. Disappointed in her expectations that other countries 

 would follow her example, she is now considering the policy of aban- 

 doning " free trade " for what she calls " fair trade," self-interest 

 again prompting this change of attitude toward other nations ; and 

 yet she is not in reality any more selfish in the one case than in the 

 other. 



Referring again to what is called the moral wrong of using the 

 product of another's brain without remuneration, I would ask, " Why 

 this special claim of a foreign author ? " Does not our government 

 send experts abroad to gain information on subjects of the greatest 

 importance to our interests at home ? Do not these experts closely 

 examine the establishments, public and private, of the Old World and 

 gain all the information possible in regard to them ? Do they not 

 visit the great manufactories in all their variety ; the workshops, the 

 docks, war-vessels, arsenals, colleges, schools, prisons, hospitals, and 

 churches ; and inquire into and observe the modes of foreign life, 

 social, industrial, political, and religious ? In short, do they not in- 

 form themselves of everything likely to be of benefit to their own 

 country, and, although the information given them may have been 

 the result of centuries of brain-labor, do their countrymen hesitate to 

 appropriate such information to their own use and without pay ? The 

 fact is that, the intercommunication of nations gives advantages which 

 isolation could not afford, and if such advantages include the spread 

 of knowledge among the people, obtained either in the way I have 

 here described, or by the cheap reprint of a foreign book, it would be 

 difficult to show anything criminal in thus acquiring it. 



In conclusion, it may be well to remark that, even in England, 

 brain -property is not treated like that known as personal or real, for, 

 while the latter has perpetual protection by law, the former has only 

 pi-otection within prescribed limits, the English copyright extending 



