THE JEXGLISH COPYRIGHT COMMISSION. 167 



copies of it in his printer's or publisher's hands. I presume that there 

 is no doubt whatever that those copies are his property in the strictest 

 sense of the word, and that the law will protect him against any per- 

 son who proposes to rob him of that property. I have recently met 

 with the argument (and, singularly enough, professing to proceed from 

 the straitest school of free-traders), that the state, or the Legislature 

 acting for it, should, as I understand the argument, regard books as a 

 kind of property to be disposed of mainly for the benefit of the persons 

 who read them, and that the state should take upon itself somewhat 

 the same function as it used formerly to do when it passed sumptuary 

 laws, and should regulate the amount of profit to be derived by the 

 author according to what it considers fair and reasonable. That strikes 

 me as being a reversal of all rules of commercial policy at present 

 recognized. But supposing it to be admitted that that is a right and 

 just thing to do, I do not see why you should not go a step further. 

 If, for example, I had had the good fortune to write such a work as 

 " Hamlet " or the " Principia," it would appear, according to that line 

 of argument, that the state would be justified in seizing all the copies 

 of it, and in disposing of them in such a manner as might be conducive 

 to their distribution, and that mainly on the ground of the great ser- 

 vice to the public which those books might render. I do not know 

 whether any one has carried the argument so far as that, but it appears 

 to me to be the legitimate outcome of it. However, an author who 

 has an edition in his publisher's hands has a right, at present, to regard 

 it as his absolute property, to deal with as he pleases, and he has a 

 further right as vender to make any contract which he pleases with any 

 person who proposes to be a purchaser of one of the copies of that 

 book ; that is to say, if he chooses to make it a condition of sale that 

 the purchaser shall not copy or multiply by printing the work which 

 the vender sells under certain penalties, I apprehend that the existing 

 law will enable him to recover those penalties from any person who 

 violates that contract. The property being his own, he has a right to 

 make any conditions he pleases with regard to the disposal of it ; the 

 person who buys buys on those conditions, and is subject to them. 

 That appears to me to be the natural mode of looking at the trade in 

 books as a branch of commerce which is subject to the ordinary rules 

 of free trade, namely, that a man shall make any contract which he 

 pleases with regard to the disposal of his property. And I look upon 

 the copyright law simply as a means of overcoming the inconvenience 

 which would arise out of that state of things ; it would be a very cum- 

 brous process ; it would largely interfere with the sale of books, and 

 it would doubtless be very hard to recover the penalties in the case of 

 a breach of contract. So far from copyright law being any favor 

 which the state confers upon the author, any privilege Avhich is granted 

 to him by the state, it seems to me that it is simply a mode of pre- 

 venting such inconvenience as I have just referred to ; so that in my 



