CONCERNING THE SUPPRESSED BOOK. 441 



the absence of international copyright, yet it is false that these au- 

 thors are preyed upon in the unqualified way asserted by the " Times." 

 There are, of course, American publishers, and plenty of them, who 

 are thoroughly unscrupulous ; but there are others, and they are not a 

 few, who do the best they can under the present demoralizing system 

 to compensate foreign authors for their work. They pay them by 

 voluntary arrangement, not the rates that they are accustomed to at 

 home, and not always perhaps as much as they might, but often, as I 

 happen to know, to their own loss, when books are reprinted by others 

 and the market supplied by degraded editions on which the author 

 receives nothing. In the absence of an international copyright law, 

 this voluntary action of American publishers is the only thing practi- 

 cable or possible to mitigate the barbarism of the situation. Imper- 

 fect as it may be, it is an honest procedure in behalf of the foreign 

 author ; and it is now practiced to an extent that should materially 

 qualify those wholesale charges of piracy. The present case is to be 

 regarded in the light of these considerations ; and I think it will be 

 found that the lesson to be drawn from it is quite different from that 

 which has been drawn by the English press. 



So far as the above correspondence is concerned, the motives that 

 impelled me to take the share I had in bringing out the suppressed 

 book are to be gathered only from a scrap in a hurried private letter to 

 Mr. Spencer ; but, as my act is now branded as piratical, I must be 

 excused for stating more fully the reasons by which I was actually in- 

 fluenced in the course taken. 



Mr. Harrison had an important controversy with Herbert Spencer 

 on a grave subject, which was published in the "Nineteenth Century." 

 In printing their papers I have the right to assume their purpose to be 

 that they should be read as widely as possible. There was much in- 

 terest in this country to follow this discussion, and we accordingly 

 printed the articles in "The Popular Science Monthly." 



But, when the controversy was finished, there was a call for its re- 

 publication in a separate form, more convenient, accessible, and cheaper 

 than in the pages of a magazine. The demand was reasonable, and I 

 was anxious to comply with it, that the discussion might be dissemi- 

 nated as widely as possible. I, moreover, desired the republication for 

 the same reason that I had urged Mr. Spencer to go on with the con- 

 troversy with Mr. Harrison. Although knowing the low state of his 

 working-power, and how important it was that he should not be inter- 

 rupted by such side-issues in the prosecution of the great philosophi- 

 cal work upon which he has been engaged for many years, it seemed 

 to me of greater importance that he should seize the opportunity 

 offered by Mr. Harrison's attack to develop more fully his fundamental 

 religious opinions. He had published but little upon that subject for 

 a long time, his views had been much controverted and much misunder- 



