1829. ] > [>.603 J 
LITERARY PROPERTY.* 
In the objects of their protection, and the variety of solicitude with 
which it is bestowed, the laws of every country, during any given period, 
afford a fair indication of the tastes and general advancement of its ruling 
classes. Labour will not be directed towards any particular production 
without security for its enjoyment ; and, accordingly, if a want be felt 
for any specific object, care will be taken that the law throw around it 
the requisite protection. Were a country to be discovered in which 
copyright was found secured by laws, which permitted the owner of a 
work to set. spring guns in booksellers shops to preserve it from piracy, 
by shooting the purchasers of pirated editions—to seize printing presses, 
on the presumption that they were kept with intent to be used in the 
piracy of books—or to arm copyright keepers with bludgeons, for the 
purpose of going about knocking all literary poachers on the head, 
while the same laws disqualified from the perusal of a book every one 
who had not lands, either in his own right, or his wife’s right, of the 
annual value of one hundred pounds, nor any lease of the yearly value of 
one hundred and fifty pounds, nor unless he were the son and heir appa- 
rent of an esquire, or other person of higher degree—we should be driven 
to infer a most unusual love of learning in the rulers of that country, and 
the most intense selfishness in its gratification. It is true that. indications 
so conclusive as these are seldom to be met with; and, at all events, 
whatever other tastes the institutions of one country at least may bespeak, 
we are aware of none which display a correspondent passion for learning. 
The code of literary jurisprudence may, however, generally be taken as 
a sort ofithermometer-in the moral world—a pretty accurate index of the 
influences to which such a code must necessarily be subject; and we 
believe it will be found that the extending protection to literary pro- 
perty which, in different countries, that code has from time to time 
afforded, has been in close consistency with the dgreee in which the 
rulers in each participated in the general advancement of the age. 
In Greece and Rome, indeed, where learning was in high esteem, it 
appears that, notwithstanding authors were in the habit of selling such 
copies of their works as they could get transcribed, and the sale of those 
copies constituted a branch of trade, the law did not recognize any ex- 
clusive proprietorship in the copyright.t But then, it is to be remem- 
bered, the labour and cost of transcribing must have been so great, as to 
have contracted sale within very narrow limits ; and we can conceive of 
nothing short of the capability of multiplying to some such extent as that 
which the art of printing has introduced, which could render piracy a 
pursuit sufficiently alluring to call forth the protection of the law against 
it. Legislatiou has its erigin only in some antecedent want; and a law 
for the protection of literary property, in a country destitute of the 
knowledge of printing, would be about as much required, as one to 
guard from imitation the Logos of Leonardi da Vinci, or the Cartoons of 
Raphael. Galen might have delivered, to the hour of his death, surgical 
* A Treatise on the Laws of Literary Property, with an Historical View and Disquisitions 
on the Principles and Effects of the Laws. By Robert Maugham, Secretary to the Law 
Institution, &c. London, Longman and Co., Dixon and Co., Adam Black, Edinburgh. 
1828. 10s. 6d. 
+ Dissertation surla Propriété Littéraire, et la Librairie chez les Anciens, lue le 27 Nov. 
1827, a la Société d’Emulation du’ Département de Vain, 
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