( ]08 ] 36 



deposit the copy, or copies, at any lime, afterward, and previous to the com- 

 mencement of an action for infringement of copyright, by paying the value 



of the book and dolhirs. But if the book be demanded and refused, 



the copyright shoukl be thereby forfeited. 



It shoukl be made obligatory that records be kept in the place of deposit ; 

 that the books be stamped so as to be easily and with certainty identified ; 

 and that they be restricted to the depository, unless required by a court 

 of law. , 



Tiie law would apply not only to books, but to maps and charts, music, 

 engravings, &c., and sliould require that every copy so sent for security of 

 copyright, should be perfect, and, if a book, w^ell boimd. 



A monthly list of books thus deposited should be printed and distributed 

 to booksellers and others. There are other details which would be neces- 

 sary to be considered in preparing siich a law, but they are easily adjusted 

 after establishing the principles upon which the enactment is to be founded. 



A law with the provisions above stated, would be much more satisfactory 

 to publishers, because it would require less of them, and subject them to 

 much less expense, and, more than all, would effect what the present, law 

 does not — security of copyright. 



The question next arises, "Where shall the deposit of the book be 

 made?" If but one copy be required, I beg leave to suggest that it could 

 be most properly placed in the library of the Smithsonian Institution. The 

 connexion of this establishment with the government is such as to render 

 the deposit here peculiarly appropriate. We believe that it would be per- 

 manently more useful here, and better protected than in any other estab- 

 lishment. The rooms in the State Department appropriated to the purpose 

 are now crowded to excess, and are, besides, needed for other purposes. 

 The care of them occupies much of the time of a clerk, whose services can 

 ill be spared. The clerks are continually changing, and hence it is impos- 

 sible that any pro})er system for the care and usefulness of the books can be 

 carried out. The business is entirely foreign to the department, and has, I 

 am told, generally been considered as an incumbrance. It belongs more 

 properly to a public library, and to one maintaining just the relation to the 

 general government which the Smithsonian Institution does. This is the 



shall ask your perniiKsion, sir, to point ont, that if there are few old books, and even few 

 editions already published of the same worJv, which ought not to find a place in a large 

 metropolitan library, there are still fewer which are published at the present day, or which 

 will be pu])lis]ied within a certain period. The history of the past is nearly known, or at 

 least will be, sooner or later, as far as the nionunicnts and documents of every kind which 

 have survived to tlie present day will allow. It is not the same thing for the history of the 

 future; there every thing is vague, every thing is unknown, and we are absolutely ignorant, 

 if, in the most insiguiticant book, in a pamphlet, in a song sold in the street, in a i^lacard in- 

 tended to announce the most common events, is to be found a fact, a circumstance, a name, 

 a date, which one hundred years hence may excite interest by its connection in any manner, 

 and whicli it is now impossible to foresee, with some singular event, or with some man become 

 celebrated. It would be, however, impossible to exact from the manager of a library, that 

 with the view of jn-eparing himself for all tlie circumstances of the future, he should 

 apply the funds at his coitiTnand for the purchase of all books which appear annually in his 

 country; besides, unless he devoted himself entirely to thai, he could never know all the 

 Iwge and small books in published volumes, in livraisons (parts) or even in detached sheets, 

 which might be published, not only in the capital, but in the most distant and obscure places 

 in the provinces. It is this -which, iridei)endently of any other consideration, renders the 

 legal deposit so necessary ; it is advisable, also, that whilst rendering it the least onerous 

 possible to the publishers, by exacting only the nninber'of copies strictly necessary for the 

 object in view, all the measurfs vvhicli oou rejider it really useful and of general application 

 should be taken. ■■ 



