"saves me from jail." Haynes Bayley died in extreme poverty. Similar
statements are furnished us in relation to numerous others who have, by
the use of their pens, largely contributed to the enjoyment and
instruction of the people of Great Britain. It would, indeed, be difficult
to find very many cases in which it had been otherwise with persons
exclusively dependent on the produce of literary labor. With few and
brilliant exceptions, their condition appears to have been, and to be, one
of almost hopeless poverty. Scarcely any thing short of this, indeed,
would induce the acceptance of the public charity that is occasionally
doled out in the form of pensions on the literary fund.

This is certainly an extraordinary state of things, and one that makes to
our charitable feelings an appeal that is almost irresistible.
Nevertheless, before giving way to such feelings, it would be proper to
examine into the real cause of all this poverty, with a view to satisfy
ourselves if real charity would carry us in the direction now proposed.
The skilful physician always studies the cause of disease before he
determines on the remedy, and this course is quite as necessary in
prescribing for moral as for physical disorder. Failing to do this, we
might increase instead of diminishing the evil, and might find at last
that we had been taxing ourselves in vain.

What is claimed by English authors is perpetuity and universality of
property in the clothing they supply for the body that is furnished to the
world by other and unpaid men; and an examination of the course of
proceeding in that country for the last century and a half shows that each
step that has been taken has been in that direction. While denying to the
producers of facts and ideas any right whatsoever, every act of
legislation has tended to give more and more control over their
dissemination to men who appropriated them to their own use, and brought
them in an attractive form before the reader. Early in the last century
was passed an act well known as the Statute of Queen Anne, giving to
authors fourteen years as the period during which they were to have a
monopoly of the peculiar form of words they chose to adopt in coming
before the world. The number of persons then living in England and Wales,
and subjected to that monopoly, was about five millions. Since that time
the field of its operation has been enlarged, until it now embraces not
only England and Wales, but Scotland,