disputes. The rate of such compensation must be a matter of agreement. As
between author and publisher, custom seems to have fixed on what an
arithmetician would call "square measure," as the basis of the bargain;
and the question of adjustment is simplified down to "how much by the
column, or the page?"

This system has its advantages in a business point of view; because, when
the price, or rate, is agreed on, nothing remains but to count the pages.
Whether the publisher or the writer is benefited by this plan of
computation, in a literary point of view, may, however, be doubted.

A man who is paid _by the page_ for his literary labour, has every
inducement but one to expand lines into sentences, sentences into
paragraphs, and paragraphs into extravagant dimensions. An idea, to him,
is a thing to be manufactured into words, each of which has a money value;
and if he can, by that simplest of all processes--a verbal dilution--give
to one idea the expansive power of twelve; if he can manage to spread over
six pages what would be much better said in half a page, he gains twelve
prices for his commodity, instead of one; and he sacrifices nothing but
the quality of his commodity--and _that_ is no sacrifice, so long as his
publisher and his readers do not detect it.

When a man writes for reputation, he has a very different task before him;
for no one will gain high and permanent rank as an author, unless his
ideas bear some tolerable proportion to his words. He who aims to write
_well_, will avoid diffuseness. _Multum in parvo_ will be his first
consideration; and if he achieves that, he will have secured one of the
prime requisites of literary fame.

In the earlier days of our republic, a discussion was held by several of
the prominent statesmen of the period, on the expediency of extending the
right of suffrage to others than freeholders. Some of the debaters made
long speeches; others made short ones. At length, Mr. JAY was
called on for his views of the matter. His brief response was: "Gentlemen,
in my opinion, _those who own the country ought to rule it."_ If that
distinguished patriot had been writing for the bleeding Kansas Quarterly,
at the rate of a dollar a page, he would probably have expanded this
remark. He might have written thus:

"Every man is born free and independent; or, if he is not, he ought to be.
_E pluribus unum._ He is, moreover, the natural proprietor of the soil;
for the soil, without him, is