in Christian eloquence, in reach of thought, in unwearied zeal; who has disregarded ease and intellectual delights prodigally to expend his energies on that which he regards as the sacred cause of the church and religion of his country; and who depends on his copyrights, in such of the labours of his mind as he has committed to the press, to make amends for a professional income far below his great intellectual claims. In addressing me on the subject of this bill, Dr. Chalmers says, y professional income has always been so scanty, that I should have been in great difficulties, had it not been for my authorship; and I am not aware of a more desirable compensation for the meagre emoluments of the offices I have held, than that those profits should be secured and perpetuated in favour of my descendants." And who among us, not only of those who sympathize with his splendid exertions on behalf of the church of Scotland, but of all who feel grateful for the efforts by which he has illustrated and defended our common faith, will not desire that wish to be fulfilled? How one of the publishers of his country feels towards such authors may be seen in the petition of Mr. Smith, of Glasgow, who even desires to limit the power of assigning copyright to twenty-one years, and then contrasts his case with that of those by whose creations he has been enriched. He states, "that he has obtained estate and competence by the sale of books published or sold by him, which property he has a right to entail or give in legacy | for the benefit of his heirs; while the authors who have produced the works that have enriched him have no interest for their heirs by the present law of copyright in the property which they have solely constituted." When I find these petitions signed by the most distinguished ornament of the Scotch church, Dr. Chalmers and by one of the most eminent among the Dissenting divines, Dr. Wardlaw, I cannot help associating with them a case which came under my notice a few days ago, on an application to me to assist a greatgrandson of Dr. Doddridge, in presenting a memorial to the bounty of the crown. Here was the descendant of one of the idols of the religious world, whose works have circulated in hundreds of thousands of copies, enduring a state of unmerited privation and suffering, from which a trifle on each volume of his ancestor's works now adorning the libraries of the wealthy Dissenters would amply relieve him! | be correct as well as cheap, and that it should have the benefit of the matured judgment of its instructors? Now, this can only be effected by permitting the family of the author to watch over his fame. An author who, in a life de.. voted to literature, has combined gifts of the historian and the poet-Mr. Southey-who has thought the statement of his case might have more effect than a petition, has permitted me to elucidate this view of the case by his example. He has lately published a complete edition of his poems, correcting the blemishes which during many years have presented themselves to his severer judgment; his copyrights in many of the original poems will expire with his life; in the corrected edition his family will enjoy an interest, but in the original poems they will retain none; and it will be in the power of Mr. Tegg, or any other of those worthy benefactors of the public who keep duteous watch over the deathbed of copyrights, to republish any of those poems with all their repented errors, and the addition of those gross blunders which are always introduced when a reprint undergoes no revision but that of a printer. But is it even certain that the books thus carelessly printed will be actually cheaper in price than if the descendants of the author published them for their own advantage? It is not fair to judge of this by recent instances, produced in the first eagerness of the freebooters of the trade to seize on and parade their spoils. It should be recollected that a proprietor who uses only one machine for publication may, with profit to himself, supply the market more cheaply than numbers who have separate expenses, and look for separate gains. But if the argument be doubtful, the fact at least is clear, and I may call the honourable member for Finsbury as my witness to prove it; for he has shown in this House, to the offence of none, but the amusement of all, and to the proof of my case, how cheaply books charged with an expensive copyright may be obtained of his friend Mr. Tegg, who, he states, nevertheless, has a stock worth more than 170,000l., which, if the principles of my opponents be fairly applied, is justly distributable among their favourite and much injured public. But grant the whole assumption-grant that if copyright be extended, the few books it will affect will be dearer to the public by the little the author will gain by each copy-grant that they will not be more correct or authentic than when issued wholesale from the press; still is there nothing On these contrasted cases the House has now good for the people but cheap knowledge? Is to decide. But before I leave the question in it necessary to associate with their introducits hands, it is fit I should advert for a moment tion to the works of the mighty dead the selfish to those opponents of the bill who, disclaiming thought that they are sharing in the riot of the the publishers and printers, appear on behalf grave, instead of cherishing a sense of pride of what they call the public, and who insist that, while they read, they are assisting to dethat it is our duty to obtain for that public the prive the grave of part of its withering power works of genius and labour at the lowest pos-over the interests of survivors? But if it were sible price. Now, passing over a doubt, which I dare scarcely hint in their presence, whether the diffusion of cheap copies of any work necessarily implies in an equal degree the diffusion of its beauties or the veneration of its injunctions, permit me to ask whether even for the public it is not desirable that works should desirable, is it possible to separate a personal sympathy with an author from the first admi ration of his works? We do not enter into his labours as into some strange and dreamy world, raised by the touch of a forgotten enchanter; the affections are breathing around us, and the author being dead, yet speaks in for its main object to relieve men of letters from the thraldom of being forced to court the living generation to aid them in rising above slavish taste and degraded prejudice, and to encourage them to rely on their own impulses." Surely this is an object worthy of the legislature of a great people, especially in an age where rest, less activity and increasing knowledge present temptations to the slight and the superficial which do not exist in a ruder age. Let those who "to beguile the time look like the time," have their fair scope-let cheap and innocent publications be multiplied as much as you please,-still the character of the age demands something impressed with a nobler labour, and accents triumphant over death and time. As from the dead level of an utilitarian philosophy no mighty work of genius ever issued, so never can such a work be enjoyed except in - that happy forgetfulness of its doctrines, which always softens the harshest creed. But I believe that those who thus plead for the people are wholly unauthorized by the feelings of the people; that the poor of these realms are richer in spirit than their advocates understand them; and that they would feel a pride in bestowing their contributions in the expression of respect to that great intellectual ancestry whose fame is as much theirs as it is the boast of the loftiest amongst us. I do not believe that the people of Scotland share in the exulta-directed to a higher aim. "The immortal tion of the publishers who have successively sent among them cheap editions of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," "Marmion," and the "Lady of the Lake;" that they can buy them at a lower price than if the great minstrel who produced them were still among the living. I cannot believe that they can so soon forget their obligations to one who has given their beautiful country a place in the imagination of mankind which may well compensate for the loss of that political individuality they so long and so proudly enjoyed, as to count with satisfaction the pence they may save by that premature death which gave his copyrights to contesting publishers, and left his halls silent and cold. It is too late to do justice to Burns; but I cannot believe the peasant who should be inspired by him to walk "in glory and in joy, following his plough by the mountain side," or who, casting his prideful look, on Saturday evening, around his circle of children, feels his pleasure heightened and reduplicated in the poet's mirror, would regret to think that the well-thumbed volume which had made him conscious of such riches had paid the charge of some sixpence towards the support of that poet's children. mind craves objects that endure." The printers need not fear. There will not be too many candidates for "a bright reversion," which only falls in when the ear shall be deaf to human praise. I have been accused of asking you to legislate "on some sort of sentimental feeling." I deny the charge: the living truth is with us; the spectral phantoms of depopulated printinghouses and shops are the baseless fancies of our opponents. If I were here beseeching indulgence for the frailties and excesses which sometimes attend fine talents-if I were here appealing to your sympathy on behalf of crushed hopes and irregular aspirations, the accusation would be just. I plead not for the wild, but for the sage; not for the perishing, but for the eternal: for him who, poet, philosopher, or historian, girds himself for some toil lasting as life-lays aside all frivolous pursuits for one virtuous purpose-that when encouraged by the distant hope of that "All-hail hereafter," which shall welcome him among the heirs of fame, he may not shudder to think of it as sounding with hollow mockery in the ears of those whom he loves, and waking sullen echoes by the side of a cheerless hearth. For such I ask this boon, and through them for mankind There is only one other consideration I would—and I ask it in the confidence with the exsuggest before I sit down, which relates not to any class, but to the community and our duties towards them. It is thus expressed in Mr. Wordsworth's petition :-"That this bill has pression of which your veteran petitioner Wordsworth closed his appeal to you-" That in this, as in all other cases, justice is capable of working out its own expediency!" THE WESTMINSTER PLAY. Nor from the youth-illumined stage alone Is gladness shed; it breathes around from all Worn eyes with childlike tears; for Memory lifts Time's curtain from the spirits' holiest stage, And makes even strangers share the precious gifts THE END. |