me sings to the enchanted ear of the
civilized world strains of such melody that the charmed senses seem to
abandon the grosser regions of earth, and to rise to purer and serener
regions above. God has created that man a poet. His inspiration is his;
his songs are his by right divine; they are his property so recognized
by human law; yet here in these United States men steal Tennyson's works
and sell his property for their profit; and this because, in spite of
the violated conscience of the nation, we refuse to give him protection
for his property. Examine your Constitution; are slaves the only species
of property there recognized as requiring peculiar protection? Sir, the
inventive genius of our brethren of the North is a source of vast wealth
to them and vast benefit to the nation. I saw a short time ago in one of
the New York journals, that the estimated value of a few of the patents
now before us in this Capital for renewal, was $40,000,000. I cannot
believe that the entire capital, invested in inventions of this
character in the United States can fall short of one hundred and fifty
or two hundred million dollars. On what protection does this vast
property rest? Just upon that same constitutional protection which gives
a remedy to the slave owner when his property is, also found outside of
the limits of the State in which he lives.

Without this protection, what would be the condition of the northern
inventor? Why, sir, the Vermont inventor protected by his own law would
come to Massachusetts, and there say to the pirate who had stolen his
property, "Render me up my property or pay me value for its use." The
Senator from Vermont would receive for answer, if he were the counsel of
the Vermont inventor, "Sir, if you want protection for your property go
to your own State; property is governed by the laws of the State within
whose jurisdiction it is found; you have no property in your invention
outside of the limits of your State; you cannot go an inch beyond it."
Would not this be so? Does not every man see at once that the right
of the inventor to his discovery, that the right of the poet to his
inspiration, depends upon those principles of eternal justice which God
has implanted in the heart of man, and that wherever he cannot exercise
them it is because man, faithless to the trust that he has received from
God, denies them the protection to which they are entitled?'

Sir, follow out the illustration which the Senato