sh their object by means of
legislation, they had induced the Executive to interpose and make a law in
their favor, in defiance of the well-known will of the House of
Representatives? Under such circumstances, would it be extraordinary if we
should, within three years from the ratification of the treaty, see the
commencement of an agitation for a change in the copyright system? It
seems to me that it would not.

The time for the arrival of this agitation would probably be hastened by
an extension of the system of centralization that would next be claimed;
for the present measure can be regarded as little more than the entering
wedge for others. France and England profit enormously by setting the
fashions for the world. New patterns and new articles are invented that
sell in the first season for treble or quadruple the price at which they
are gladly supplied in the second; and it is by aid of the perpetual
changes bf fashion that foreigners so much control our markets. Recently,
our manufacturers have been enabled to reproduce many new articles in very
short time, and this has tended greatly to reduce the profits of
foreigners, who are of course dissatisfied. Copyrights are now granted in
both those countries for new patterns, new forms of clothing, &c. &c., and
our next step will be towards the arrangement of a treaty for, securing to
the inventor of a print, or a new fashion of paletot, the monopoly of its
production in our markets; and when the claim for this shall be made, it
will be found to stand on precisely the same ground with that now made in
behalf of the producers of books, and must be granted. The Frenchman will
then have the exclusive right of supplying us with new _mousselines de
laine_, and the Englishman with new carpets and new forms of earthenware;
and we shall be told that that is the true mode of developing
manufacturing and artistic skill among ourselves. How much farther the
system may be carried it is difficult to tell, for, when we shall once
have established the system of regulating foreign and domestic trade by
treaty, the House of Representatives will scarcely be troubled with much
discussion of such affairs. Extremes generally meet, and it will be
extraordinary, if progress in that direction shall not be followed by
progress in the other, until our authors shall, at length, become
perfectly satisfied of the accuracy of Mr. Macaulay, when he told the
British authors, then claiming an extension