6 SEE DANIEL WILSON ON THE 



of his may deserve ; whether it deserves any recompense in money, or whether money in 

 any quantity could hire him to do the like. 



"That this labour has found hitherto, in money or money's worth, small recompense 

 or none ; that he is by no means sure of its ever finding recompense, but thinks that if 

 so, it will be at a distant time, when he, the labourer, will probably be no longer in need 

 of money, and those dear to him will still be in need of it. 



" That the law does at least protect all persons in selling the prod\iction of their labour 

 at what they can get for it, in all market-places, to all lengths of time. Much more than 

 this the law does to many, but so much it does to all, or less than this to none. 



"That your petitioner cannot discover himself to have done unlawfully in this his said 

 labour of writing books, or to have become criminal or to have forfeited the law's protection 

 thereby. Contrariwise your petitioner believes firmly that he is innocent in said labour ; 

 that if he be found in the long run to have written a genuine enduring book, his merit 

 therein, and desert towards England and English and other men, will be considerable, not 

 easily estimable in money ; that on the other hand, if his book proves false and ephemeral,- 

 he and it will be abolished and forgotten and no harm done. 



'• That, in this manner, your petitioner plays no unfair game against the world, his 

 stake being life itself, so to speak (for the penalty is death by starvation) and the world's 

 stake nothing till once it sees the dice thrown ; so that in any case the world cannot lose. 



"That in the happy and long doubtful event of the game's going in his favour, your 

 petitioner submits that the small winnings thereof do belong to him or his, and that no 

 mortal has justly either part or lot in them at all, now, henceforth, or forever. 



" May it therefore please your Honourable House to protect him in said happy and long 

 doubtful event , and (by passing your Copyright Bill) forbid all Thomas Teggs and other 

 extraneous persons, entirely unconcerned in this adventure of his, to steal from him his 

 small winnings, for a space of sixty years at shortest. After sixty years, unless your 

 Honourable House provide otherwise, they may begin." 



Respectable printers, publishers, and booksellers, are naturally scandalized at the 

 application of such terms as " stealing " " pirated editions," etc., to their free dealings with 

 authors' works. But to a writer who, like Carlyle, has produced a book, which is the 

 embodiment of the thought and experience of studious years, of long and patient labour 

 much expenditure of time, and not a little outlay of money in the accumulation of his 

 materials, it is not easy to cull a phrase which shall express his feelings on its appropria- 

 tion for the sole use and profit of a stranger, and yet prove acceptable to the highly 

 respectable appropriators. Shakespeare's Falstaff tried his hand at it long ago. " ' Convey,' 

 the wise it call. ' Steal! ' fob, a fico for the phrase ! " 



We have had some grave lessons of the need of a high standard of morality to be the 

 guide of public opinion, and of public life in Canada. In the long run all experience proves 

 that honesty is the best policy. In spite of all the gains of the American community 

 from the wide diffusion of cheap literature, they have sustained a serious loss in the 

 impediment it long presented to the encouragement of native talent. But apart from 

 this, it is a reflection of grave import to a people among whom the love of literature has 

 been fostered by such means, to consider how^ many struggling authors who have con- 

 tributed to their pleasure, would have welcomed a reasonable share in the profits of American 

 reprints and a gleam of sunshine in some of life's deepest gloom. Scott died in the 



