ires.

Some lovers of justice, however, think that it is unnecessary all at
once to endow the Trade with these windfalls, and that if an author's
family, or his or their assignees, were prepared to publish cheap
editions immediately after the expiration of the usual period of
protection, they ought to be allowed to do so for a further period of,
say, forty years. If they failed within a reasonable time either to do
so themselves or to arrange for others to do so, this extended period
should lapse.

Were this to be the law nobody could say that it was unfair; but it is
never likely to be the law. It would take time for discussion, and now
there is no time left in which to discuss anything in Parliament. A
much-needed Copyright Bill has been in draft for years, has been
mentioned in Queen's and King's speeches, but it has never been read
even a first time. If it ever is read a first time, its only chance of
becoming law will be if it is taken in a lump, as it stands, without
consideration or amendment. To such a pass has legislation been
reduced in this country!

This draft Bill does not contain any provision for specially
protecting the families of authors whose works long outlive their
mortal lives. It makes no invidious distinctions. It leaves all the
authors to hang together, the quick and the dead. Perhaps this is the
better way.

HANNAH MORE ONCE MORE

I have been told by more than one correspondent, and not always in
words of urbanity, that I owe an apology to the manes of Miss Hannah
More, whose works I once purchased in nineteen volumes for 8s. 6d.,
and about whom in consequence I wrote a page some ten years ago.[A]

[Footnote A: See _Collected Essays_, ii. 255.]

To be accused of rudeness to a lady who exchanged witticisms with Dr.
Johnson, soothed the widowed heart of Mrs. Garrick, directed the early
studies of Macaulay, and in the spring of 1815 presented a small copy
of her _Sacred Dramas_ to Mr. Gladstone, is no light matter. To libel
the dead is, I know, not actionable--indeed, it is impossible; but
evil-speaking, lying, and slandering are canonical offences from which
the obligation to refrain knows no limits of time or place.

I have often felt uneasy on this score, and never had the courage,
until this very evening, to read over again what in the irritation of
the moment I had been tempted to say about Miss Hannah More, after the
outlay upon her writings already mentioned. Eight shilli