ing to push their
sale, by replacing them with poor imitations, by reproducing them in
a hundred indirect ways; and no one knows how far the science of
plagiarism, and skilful imitation may be carried. Against proprietors.
Are we ignorant of the fact, that a demand for a dozen copies enables a
bookseller to sell a thousand; that with an edition of five hundred he
can supply a kingdom for thirty years? What will the poor authors do in
the presence of this omnipotent union of booksellers? I will tell them
what they will do. They will enter the employ of those whom they now
treat as pirates; and, to secure an advantage, they will become wage
laborers. A fit reward for ignoble avarice, and insatiable pride. [69]

Contradictions of contradictions! "Genius is the great leveller of the
world," cries M. de Lamartine; "then genius should be a proprietor.
Literary property is the fortune of democracy." This unfortunate
poet thinks himself profound when he is only puffed up. His eloquence
consists solely in coupling ideas which clash with each other: ROUND
SQUARE, DARK SUN, FALLEN ANGEL, PRIEST and LOVE, THOUGHT and POETRY,
GUNIUS {???}, and FORTUNE, LEVELING and PROPERTY. Let us tell him, in
reply, that his mind is a dark luminary; that each of his discourses is
a disordered harmony; and that all his successes, whether in verse or
prose, are due to the use of the extraordinary in the treatment of the
most ordinary subjects.

"Le National," in reply to the report of M. Lamartine, endeavors to
prove that literary property is of quite a different nature from landed
property; as if the nature of the right of property depended on the
object to which it is applied, and not on the mode of its exercise and
the condition of its existence. But the main object of "Le National"
is to please a class of proprietors whom an extension of the right of
property vexes: that is why "Le National" opposes literary property.
Will it tell us, once for all, whether it is for equality or against it?

6. OBJECTION.--Property in occupied land passes to the heirs of the
occupant. "Why," say the authors, "should not the work of genius pass
in like manner to the heirs of the man of genius?" M. Wolowski's reply:
"Because the labor of the first occupant is continued by his heirs,
while the heirs of an author neither change nor add to his works. In
landed property, the continuance of labor explains the continuance of
the right."

Yes, when the labor is cont