40 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mission, by which the existing law of copyright would be repealed and 

 the system of royalty established iu its place, under which a publisher 

 of the first edition of a new work would have what we may call a close 

 time of a year, and after that it would be open to any other publisher, 

 paying a fixed royalty to the author, to bring out new editions of that 

 work. Have you turned your attention to the probable operation of a 

 scheme of that sort, on the works, for instance, that you yourself have 

 published ? 



A. I have given it some attention since the subject was first men- 

 tioned to me by a member of this commission, and I have listened to 

 the evidence oriven in this room since I came into it. In that evidence 

 I have heard over and over again beliefs expressed of what would occur 

 if the royalty scheme were to become law. These beliefs are to be 

 pitted against what we now know as certainties ; and taking everything 

 into account, I prefer the certainty now known to me to the beliefs ex- 

 pressed by the witness who preceded me. It would be in my opinion 

 a gross injustice, and might open a channel to interference of a still 

 more serious and sweeping character, if the rights of an author over his 

 hard-earned intellectual property were interfered with in the manner I 

 have heard indicated here. 



Q. Now under the present law has it been your custom to part 

 with your copyright in the first instance, or only for a limited period ? 



A. The first work that I ever published was given to an eminent 

 publisher ; and I was averse to making any arrangement whatever with 

 him. In those days I thought it in a measure imgentlemanly to bar- 

 gain or haggle with a publisher; and I left it to him to do what he 

 pleased with the volume. Subsequently, the Messrs. Longman, and 

 particularly Mr. William Longman, pressed me more than once to pub- 

 lish a volume of lectures, and about 1863 I agreed to do so. There 

 was at that time a subject of great and growing importance, regarding 

 which the English pubhc were entirely uninformed, though the public 

 intelligence was raised, I thought, to a sufficient level to profit by a 

 clear exposition. With very hard labor I accomplished a volume on 

 this subject. I felt myself free (and this is the liberty that I should 

 very much object to see limited in any way) to say to Mr. Longman 

 that I should regard him as a business-man ; that publishers were, to 

 my knowledge, very competent to take care of themselves, and that I 

 was determined, if he published a volume of mine, also to take care of 

 myself and meet him on business-terms. It was his wish that I should 

 do so, and we then and there entered into an agreement for a single 

 edition of the work. That has been my practice with Messrs. Longman 

 up to the present hour, I sell my books to them edition by edition, 

 always retaining the right to dispose as I please of the subsequent 

 editions of each work. The expenses of each edition — of printing, 

 paper, and advertisements — are added up, the book is priced by mutual 

 agreement, the profits are ascertained, and on the day of publication 



