r of transportation, and that power has been
so used that while the State received but eight cents the transporters
charged three, five, six, and eight dollars for work that should have been
done for one. The position in which the authors are necessarily placed is
precisely the one in which our State has voluntarily placed itself. To
enable them to collect their dues, some person or persons must have a
monopoly of publication, and they must and will collect five, ten, and
often twenty dollars for every one that reaches the author. The Union
would gain largely by paying into our treasury thrice the sum we receive
for transit duty, on the simple condition that we abolished the monopoly
of transportation; and it would gain far more largely by doing the same
with foreign authors. If justice does really call upon us to pay them, our
true course would be to do it directly from the Treasury, placing, if
necessary, a million of dollars annually at the disposal of the British
government, upon the simple condition that it releases us from all claim
to the monopoly of publication. Such a release would be cheap, even at two
millions; enough to give $4,000 a year to five hundred persons, and that
number would certainly include all who can even fancy us under any
obligation to them. My own impression is, that no such payment is required
by justice, either as regards our own authors or foreign ones. Of the
former, all can be and are well paid, _who can produce books that the
public are willing to read_, and no law that could be made would secure
payment to those who cannot. Their monopoly extends over a smaller number
of persons than does the English one; and if the more than thirty millions
of people who are subject to the latter cannot support their few writers,
the cause of difficulty is to be found at home, and there must the remedy
be applied. Nevertheless, by adopting the course suggested, we should
certainly free ourselves from any necessity for choosing between the
payment of many millions annually to authors and the men who stand between
them and the public, on the one hand, and of dispensing largely with the
purchase of books, on the other. If the nation must pay, the fewer persons
through whose hands the money passes the smaller will be the cost to it,
and the greater the gain to authors.

The ratification of the treaty would impose upon us a very large amount of
taxation that must inevitably be paid either in money or in abs