same amount of skill and capital. Twenty years hence, when
the market shall be greatly increased, it may, and as I think will, become
a question whether the monopoly has not been granted for too long a
period, and many persons may then be found disposed to unite with Mr.
Macaulay in the belief that the disadvantages of long periods preponderate
so greatly over their advantages, as to make it proper to retrace in part
our steps, limiting the monopoly to twenty-one years, or one half the
present period. The inquiry may then come to be made, what is the present
value of a monopoly of forty-two years, as compared with what would be
paid for one of twenty-one years; and when it is found that, in nine
hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, one will sell for exactly
as much as the other, it will perhaps be decided that no reason exists for
maintaining the present law, even if no change be now made. Suppose,
however, the treaty to be confirmed, establishing the monopoly of
foreigners in our market, and that the people who have been accustomed to
consume largely of cheap literature now find themselves deprived of it,
would not this tend to hasten the period at which the existing law would
come under consideration? I cannot but think it would. The common school
makes a great demand for school-books, and both make a great demand for
newspapers. All of these combine to make a demand for cheap books among an
immense and influential portion of our community, that cannot yet afford
to pay $1.25 for "Fern Leaves" or for the "Reveries of a Bachelor,"
although they can well afford 25 cents for a number of "Harper's
Magazine," or for "Jane Eyre." Let us now suppose that the novels of
Dickens and Bulwer, the books of Miss Aguilar, and those of other authors
with which they have been accustomed to supply themselves, should at once
be raised to monopoly prices and thus placed beyond their reach, would it
not produce inquiry into the cause, and would not the answer be that we
had given English authors a monopoly in our market to enable our own to
secure a monopoly in that of England? Would not the sufferers next inquire
by what process this had been accomplished, seeing that the direct
representatives of the people had always been so firmly opposed to it; and
would not the answer be that the literary men of the two countries had
formed a combination for the purpose of taxing the people of both; and
that when they had failed to accompli