Wood.] 124: [June. 



Tn consequence of the existing relations in reference to copyright 

 between the United States and Great Britain, by which the English 

 author is deprived of all protection here, and the American in Eng- 

 land, great injustice is done to the writers of both countries. An 

 English work is reprinted with us at the discretion of the American 

 publisher, without payment to the author; and the cost is thus so 

 much lessened, that the native author can compete with the foreign 

 only by foregoing all compensation for his labor, or by producing a 

 book much more acceptable to the public. The fault of this condi- 

 tion of things is exclusively our own ; as the English government has 

 shown itself not only willing but desirous of establishing the due rela- 

 tions by means of an equable international copyright law. But hitherto 

 the supposed interests of the publishers, who can print without re- 

 compense to the author, and of the public, who are thus supplied 

 with cheaper books, have outweighed with our legislators the claims 

 of justice; and the consequence has been, as in the end it always 

 will be, that the wrong has produced its legitimate fruit of evil; on 

 the one hand overwhelming us with a cheap and pernicious litera- 

 ture, which is sapping the morals and vitiating the taste of the young, 

 and on the other discountenancing domestic productions of a higher 

 moral tone, and better adapted to our wants. Strange that the legis- 

 lators, who can see clearly the propriety of protection to the manu- 

 facture of cloth, iron, and paper, are blind to the at least equal pro- 

 priety of protecting against foreign interference the most important 

 of all manufactures, that of sustenance and ornament for the mind ! 



From chemical authorship the attention of Dr. Bache was natu- 

 rally turned to chemical teaching, and he began to lecture on the 

 subject so early as 1821. Probably, in order to test his capacity 

 before entering on a larger field, he made his first attempt in the 

 presence of a class consisting exclusively of his brothers, sisters, and 

 other near relatives; but soon afterwards he lectured to the private 

 medical students of his friend. Dr. Thomas T. Hewson, and still 

 later to a much larger class, composed of the joint pupils of two pri- 

 vate summer medical schools, at that time established in Philadel- 

 phia. While thus teaching medical classes in the summer, he de- 

 livered, also, courses in the winter, first to the pupils of the Franklin 

 Institute, in which he became Professor of Chemistry in 1826, and 

 afterwards to classes of pharmaceutical students in the Philadelphia 

 College of Pharmacy, by which he was appointed to the same pro- 

 fessorship in the year 1831. 



