ed, and when the facilities of
distribution had vastly grown, the term was fixed at twenty-eight years,
with renewal to widow or children for fourteen years more. At the present
moment, you are secured in a monopoly for forty-two years, among a
population of twenty-six millions of people, certain, at the close of
twenty years more, to be fifty millions and likely, at the close of
another half century, to be a hundred millions, and with facilities, for
the disposal of your products, growing at a rate unequaled in the world.
With this vast increase of market, and increase of power over that market,
the consumer should be supplied more cheaply than in former times; yet
such is not the case. The novels of Mrs. Rowson and Charles B. Brown, and
the historical works of Dr. Ramsay, persons who then stood in the first
rank of authors, sold as cheaply as do now the works of Fanny Fern, the
'Reveries' of Ik Marvel, or the history of Mr. Bancroft; and yet, in the
period that has since elapsed, the cost of publication has fallen probably
twenty-five per cent. We have here an inversion of the usual order of
things, and it is with these facts before us that you claim to have your
monopoly extended over another thirty millions of people; in consideration
of which, our people are to grant to the authors of foreign countries a
monopoly of the privilege of supplying them with books produced abroad.
This application strikes me as unwise. It tends to produce inquiry, and
that will, probably, in its turn, lead rather to a reduction than an
extension of your privileges. Can it be supposed that when, but a few
years hence, our population shall have attained a height of fifty
millions, with a demand for books probably ten times greater than at
present, the community will be willing to continue to you a monopoly,
during forty-two years, of the right of presenting a body that is common
property, as compensation for putting it in a new suit of clothing? I
doubt it much, and would advise you, for your own good, to be content with
what you have. Aesop tells us that the dog lost his piece of meat in the
attempt to seize a shadow, and such may prove to be the case on this
occasion. So, too, may it be with the owners of patents. The discoverers
of principles receive nothing, but those who apply them enjoy a monopoly
created by law for their use. Everybody uses chloroform, but nobody pays
its discoverer. The man who taught us how to convert India rubber in