ur days; and it has accorded so
well with the tendency of other things, that the moral drift of a book is
no longer regarded, and the severest censure which can be passed upon it
is to say that it is in bad taste; such is the phrase--and the phrase is
not confined to books alone. Anything may be written, said, or done, in
bad feeling and with a wicked intent; and the public are so tolerant of
these, that he who should express a displeasure on that score would be
censured for bad taste himself!

_Sir Thomas More_.--And yet you talked of the improvement of the age, and
of the current literature as exceeding in worth that of any former time

_Montesinos_.--The portion of it which shall reach to future times will
justify me; for we have living minds who have done their duty to their
own age and to posterity.

_Sir Thomas More_.--Has the age in return done its duty to them?

_Montesinos_.--They complain not of the age, but they complain of an
anomalous injustice in the laws. They complain that authors are deprived
of a perpetual property in the produce of their own labours, when all
other persons enjoy it as an indefeasible and acknowledged right. And
they ask upon what principle, with what equity, or under what pretence of
public good they are subjected to this injurious enactment? Is it
because their labour is so light, the endowments which are required for
it so common, the attainments so cheaply and easily acquired, and the
present remuneration in all cases so adequate, so ample, and so certain?

The act whereby authors are deprived of that property in their own works
which, upon every principle of reason, natural justice, and common law,
they ought to enjoy, is so curiously injurious in its operation, that it
bears with most hardship upon the best works. For books of great
immediate popularity have their run and come to a dead stop: the hardship
is upon those which win their way slowly and difficultly, but keep the
field at last. And it will not appear surprising that this should
generally have been the case with books of the highest merit, if we
consider what obstacles to the success of a work may be opposed by the
circumstances and obscurity of the author, when he presents himself as a
candidate for fame, by the humour or the fashion of the times; the taste
of the public, more likely to be erroneous than right at any time; and
the incompetence, or personal malevolence of some unprincipled critic,
who may tak