572 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



denunciation we receive. The position of our Government 

 upon the subject I regard as wholly indefensible. Its 

 policy is an outrage upon a class of men who are public 

 benefactors, a disgrace to the country, and a scandal to 

 civilization. Grover Cleveland's republic does not recog- 

 nize that Frederic Harrison and Herbert Spencer have any 

 right of property in the products of their brainwork. Their 

 productions when brought to the United States belong 

 neither to them nor to anybody else. They are not pro- 

 tected by law, and may be appropriated by anybody with- 

 out violation of law. There are many in this country who 

 realize the vice of this policy quite as vividly as the for- 

 eign victims of it and who are labouring hard to put an end 

 to it. But, without offering a word of apology for it, there is 

 still something to be said in behalf of those who are com- 

 pelled to act under a bad state of things which they reprobate 

 but are for the time powerless to remedy. It is certainly 

 unjust to involve these in the indiscriminate condemnation 

 of the vicious system. It is a good deal easier to denounce 

 it at a distance than to fight it on the spot. Nor is it pos- 

 sible for authors, living under a government which so 

 stringently protects them that they acquire the habit of re- 

 garding literary property as something peculiarly sacred, 

 to fully appreciate the difficulties of publication and the 

 course which business must take under entirely opposite 

 circumstances, where literary property is without any legal 

 protection. With no international copyright it is certainly 

 impossible to act as if we had one. That the Government 

 does not protect him, and that if protected at all it must be 

 done by himself, is the first and vital fact that has to be 

 taken into account when any publisher makes the venture 

 of reissuing a foreign book in this country. The Govern- 

 ment is, in fact, his enemy, and virtually calls upon every- 

 body to make war upon him. However disposed he may 

 be to treat a foreign author well, to bring out his work in 



