the beautiful forms that so much gratify our eyes in
passing through the Crystal Palace. For this service you are to be paid;
but to enable you to receive payment you need the aid of the legislator,
as the common law grants no more copyright for the form in which ideas are
expressed than for the ideas themselves. In granting this aid he is
required to see that, while he secures that you have justice, he does no
injustice to the men who produce the raw material of your books, nor to
the community whose common property it is. In granting it, he is bound to
use his efforts to attain the knowledge needed for enabling him to do
justice to all parties, and not to you alone. The laws which elsewhere
govern the distribution of the proceeds of labor, must apply in your case
with equal force. Looking at them, we see that, with the growth of
population and of wealth, there is everywhere a tendency to diminution in
the proportion of the product that is allowed to the men who stand between
the producer and the consumer. In new settlements, trade is small and the
shopkeeper requires large profits to enable him to live; and, while the
consumer pays a high price, the producer is compelled to be content with a
low one. In new settlements, the miller takes a large toll for the
conversion of corn into flour, and the spinner and weaver take a large
portion of the wool as their reward for converting the balance into cloth.
Nevertheless, the shopkeeper, the miller, the spinner, and the weaver are
poor, because trade is small. As wealth and population grow, we find the
shopkeeper gradually reducing his charge, until from fifty it falls to
five per cent.; the miller reducing his, until he finds that he can afford
to give all the flour that is yielded by the corn, retaining for himself
the bran alone; and the spinner and weaver contenting himself with a
constantly diminishing proportion of the wool; and now it is that we find
shopkeepers, millers, and manufacturers grow rich, while consumers are
cheaply supplied because of the vast increase of trade. In your case,
however, the course of proceeding has been altogether different. Half a
century since, when our people were but four millions in number, and were
poor and scattered, gentlemen like you were secured in the monopoly of
their works for fourteen years, with a power of renewal for a similar
term. Twenty years since, when the population had almost tripled, and
their wealth had sixfold increas