of knowing that their rights
have been admitted after full and fair discussion before the people.
Should they now succeed in obtaining, in secret session, the confirmation
of a treaty negotiated in private, and in haste, they will, I think,
"repent at leisure;" but repentance may, and probably will, come too late.
The mischief will then have been done.

Having now, my dear sir, to the best of my ability, complied with your
request, I remain,

Yours, very respectfully,

HENRY C. CAREY.
_Burlington_, Nov. 28, 1853.

Hon. James Cooper.

NOTE.

December 31, 1867.

Mr. Dickens's tale of "No Thoroughfare" is now being reprinted here in
daily and weekly journals, and to such extent as to warrant the belief
that the number in the hands of readers of the Union, will speedily exceed
a million; obtained, too, at a cost so small as scarcely to admit of
calculation. Under a system of International Copyright a similar number
would, at the least, have cost $500,000. At 50 cents, however, the sale
would not have exceeded 50,000, yielding to author and publisher probably
$10,000. Would it be now expedient that, to enable these latter to divide
among themselves this small amount, the former should tax themselves in
one so greatly larger? Would it be right or proper that they should so do
in the hope that American novelists and poets-should in like manner be
enabled to tax the British people? Outside of the class of gentlemen who
live by the use of their pens, there are few who, having examined the
question, would, it is believed, be disposed to give to these questions an
affirmative reply.

Of all living authors there is none that, in his various capacities of
author, editor, and lecturer, is, in both money and fame, so largely paid
as Mr. Dickens. That he and others are not doubly so is due to the fact
that British policy, from before the days of Adam Smith, has tended
uniformly to the division of society, at home and abroad, into two great
classes, the very poor becoming daily more widely separated from the very
rich, and daily more and more unfitted for giving support to British
authors. That the reader may understand this fully, let him turn to recent
British journals and study the accounts there given of "an agricultural
gang system," whose horrors, as they tell their readers, "make the British
W