r international
conventions, the markets of his native country and of all the world,
excepting belated America, should be expected to give up these for the
poor half-loaf of protection accorded to his American brother we can
hardly understand.

"IV. The trading of privileges to foreign authors for privileges to be
granted to Americans is not just, because the interests of others than
themselves are sacrificed thereby."

That strikes one as a remarkable sentence to come from Philadelphia.
Here are a number of American manufacturers who ask for a certain very
moderate amount of protection for their productions, and our
Philadelphia friends, filled with an unwonted zeal for the welfare of
the community at large, say, "No; this won't do. Prices would be
higher, and _consumers_ would suffer."

It is evident that this want of practical sympathy with these literary
manufacturers is not due to any lack of interest in the enlightenment
of the community, for the last article says:

"V. Because the good of the whole people and the safety of our
republican institutions demand that books shall not be made too costly
for the multitude by giving the power to foreign authors to fix their
price here as well as abroad."

I think we may well doubt whether education as a whole, including the
important branch of ethics, is advanced by permitting our citizens to
appropriate, without compensation, the labor of others, while through
such appropriation they are also assisting to deprive our own authors
of a portion of their rightful earnings. But apart from that, the
proposition, as stated, proves too much. It is fatal to all copyright
and to all patent-right. If the good of the community and the safety
of our institutions demand that, in order to make books cheap, the
claim to a compensation for the authors must be denied, why should we
continue to pay copyrights to Longfellow and Whittier, or to the
families of Irving and Bryant? The so-called owners of these
copyrights actually have it in their power, in connection with their
publishers, to "fix the prices" of their books in this market. This
monopoly must indeed be pernicious and dangerous when it arouses
Pennsylvania to come to the rescue of oppressed and impoverished
consumers against the exactions of greedy producers, and to raise the
cry of "free books for free men."

There is certainly something refreshing in this zeal for the rights of
the consumer, though we may doubt the equ