reclothed as to render
them attractive of purchasers; but this is all they have done. Look to Mr.
Webster's works, and you will find it the same. He was a great reader. He
studied the Constitution carefully, with a view to understand what were
the views of its authors, and those views he reproduced in different and
more attractive clothing, and there his work ended. He never pretended, as
I think, to furnish the world with any new ideas; and if he had done so,
he could have claimed no property in them. Few now read the heavy volumes
containing the speeches of Fox and Pitt. They did nothing but reproduce
ideas that were common property, and in such clothing as answered the
purposes of the moment. Sir Robert Peel did the same. The world would now
be just as wise had he never lived, for he made no contribution to the
general stock of knowledge. The great work of Chancellor Kent is, to use
the words of Judge Story, "but a new combination and arrangement of old
materials, in which the skill and judgment of the author in the selection
and exposition, and accurate use of those materials, constitute the basis
of his reputation, as well as of his copyright." The world at large is the
owner of all the facts that have been collected, and of all the ideas that
have been deduced from them, and its right in them is precisely the same
that the planter has in the bale of cotton that has been raised on his
plantation; and the course of proceeding of both has, thus far, been
precisely similar; whence I am induced to infer that, in both cases, right
has been done. When the planter hands his cotton to the spinner and the
weaver, he does not say, "Take this and convert it into cloth, and keep
the cloth;" but he does say, "Spin and weave this cotton, and for so doing
you shall have such interest in the cloth as will give you a fair
compensation for your labor and skill, but, when that shall have been
paid, _the cloth will be mine_." This latter is precisely what society,
the owner of facts and ideas, says to the author: "Take these raw
materials that have been collected, put them together, and clothe them
after your own fashion, and for a given time we will agree that nobody
else shall present them in the same dress. During that time you may
exhibit them for your own profit, but at the end of that period the
clothing will become common property, as the body now is. It is to the
contributions of your predecessors to our common stock that you ar