4 SIE DANIEL WILSON ON THE 



said, by authors at least, — " The faith and morals hold which Miltou held," the interest 

 in the literature of the mother-land remained unimpaired, but the interests of the English 

 authors ceased to concern the New Englander. The result has been the systematic 

 appropriation, for upwards of a century, by the Anglo-American, of the productions of 

 English authorship during one of the most brilliant periods of English literature, in open 

 disregard of every moral claim of rightful proprietorship in the products of literary 

 industry. Nor have the wrongs of the English author been limited to the appropriation 

 and reproduction of the fruits of his honest labour. Other, and in some respects still more 

 vexatious grievances have followed as a consequence of this ignoring of his proprietary 

 rights in the fruits of his own workmaaship, and so of control over their reissue through 

 the press. The writings of Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats, as of 

 the Brownings, Tennyson, Morris and other poets of the past and present generation ; of 

 Carlyle, DjQaincy, Raskin, Arnold ; of Hallam, Macaulay, Green, Stubbs, Freeman and 

 Gardiner; of Balwer, Dickens, Thackeray, and the whole array of brilliant English 

 writiTs of fiction, have been a source of pleasure and profit to hundreds of thousands of 

 readers, without their giving a thought to the wrong done to their benefactors by the 

 traders whose dei'ds they condone, and who practi ally act on the assumption that these 

 products of exceptional iutellectual power, and in some cases, of rare genius, are the sole 

 work of the compositor and printer's devil. 



We have been so long accustomed on this continent to the shameless contempt of an 

 author's rights, and the deliberate printing and sclliug of his works for the benefit of 

 everybody but him.self, that the purcha^^er of the cheap reprints has come at length to feel 

 himj«elf airgrieved at the idea of the author claiming any control over their issue. 



The English publisher who pays the author lor his manuscript, or undertakes the 

 risk of publishing an untried author's first work, must necessarily issue it on A'ery 

 different terms lri)m the reprinter, who — safe beyond the protecting powers of English 

 justice — waits till the work has won its way to popular favour, or the author has made 

 for himself a name, and then steps in to reap where he has not sown, wholly regardless 

 of the author's claims. To pick his pocket as he lauded in the harbour of New York 

 would be criminal as well as base. To steal his brains and appropriate the profits of his 

 labour, in open contempt of his claims to his own property, under cover of an alien law, 

 is simply " smart practice," and the certain avenue to such wealth as " covers a multitude 

 of sins." One of the defenders of such proceedings argues that as " according to the 

 statutory laws of the United States, foreign authors have had no copyright, the appropria- 

 tion of their works could not be a theft." But there is another enactment older than 

 either American or English statutory laws ; and there are still countries where the appro- 

 priation of the author's coat or his purse would as little conflict with any known statutes 

 as the laying of violent hands on his writings. If an American author ajipropriates even a 

 few choice pickings from his alien confrere's writings, he is forthwith arraigned before 

 the court of Apollo and the Nine, and adjudged guilty of the high crime and misdemeanour 

 of plagiarism, with very grave penalties in reputation and standing. But the publisher 

 seizes the whole iu open day, with the full approval of a community of buyers of cheap 

 editions, as a laudable act of legitimate trading. But public opinion is not so absolutely 

 stereotyped, even under the influence of self-interest, as to be beyond all reach of amend- 

 ment. The Southern planter has ceased to luxuriate on the profits of fields cultivated by 



