in amount than it was
in France. Will it do so? No one knows, because those whose interests are
to be affected by the law are not permitted to read the law that is to be
made. They know well that they have not been consulted, and equally well
do they know that the negotiator is not familiar with the trade that is to
be regulated, and is liable, therefore, to have given his assent to
provisions that will work injury never contemplated by him at the time the
treaty had been made. Again, provisions may have been inserted, with a
view to prevent injury to the publishers, or to the public, that would be
found in practice to be utterly futile, or even to augment the difficulty
instead of remedying it. That such result would follow the adoption of
some of those whose insertion has been urged, I can positively assert. In
this state of things, it would seem to be proper that we should know
whether the provisions of the treaty were submitted to the examination of
any of the parties interested for or against it, and if so, to whom. So
far as I can learn, none of those opposed to it have had any opportunity
afforded them of reading the law, and if any advice has been taken, it
must have been of those publishers who are in favor of it. Those
gentlemen, however, are precisely the persons likely most to profit by the
adoption of the principle recognized by the treaty; and the more
disadvantageous to others the provisions for carrying that principle into
effect, the greater must be the advantage to themselves. They, therefore,
can be regarded as little more than the exponents of the wishes of their
English friends, who were counselling the British Minister on the one
hand, while on the other they were, through their friends here,
counselling the American one. A treaty negotiated under such
circumstances, would seem little likely to provide for the general
interests of the American people.

When, in 1837, the attempt was first made to secure for English authors
the privilege of copyright, a large number of them united in an agreement
declaring a certain New York house to be "the sole authorized publishers
and issuers" of their works. Now, had that house volunteered its advice to
the Secretary of State of that day, he would scarcely have regarded it as
sufficiently disinterested to be qualified for the office it had
undertaken; and yet, if any advice in the present case has been asked, it
would seem that it must have been from houses tha