f Hume, or even of
Robertson, the historian of the continent; but if one imports such an
edition, he finds himself taxed at the Custom-house to pay for the
miserable thing he refuses. You look in vain for an edition of Jeremy
Taylor; and if you import that of Bishop Heber, you pay a guinea to
the Customs to sustain the privilege of American publishers to publish
it if they choose. The writings of Lord Clarendon cannot be had in an
American edition; your importation is taxed, because at some future
day it may be convenient for some one to get up the whole in one
volume. The same is the case with the whole works of Milton, of
Dryden, and many others quite as essential to libraries: but the case
is still more provoking with the better class of modern works, such,
for instance, as Alison's "History of Europe." Under a copyright law,
it could be published in New York from the English plates, and sold
almost as cheap as the poor affair now in the market, which cannot be
better, because it would be immediately ruined by a less expensive
rival reprint. Yet, if I import a copy, to save my eyesight, I must
pay for refusing this. Thus every time an American buys a foreign
book--and such books are bought by thousands--he is paying for the
broad privilege of booksellers to make the books they import; a
privilege which they do not in general care to use, except in the case
of new and chiefly ephemeral works.

Cheap books are now furnished, because the manufacturers dread
competition; but better books, for the same money, will be readily
supplied when the publisher has the market to himself, and fears no
competitor. You remember the article on Copyright, which appeared in
_Blackwood_ in January 1842, in which it is noticed that Campbell's
"Pleasures of Hope" sells at a shilling; that Moore, Wordsworth, and
Southey, are handsomely published at three shillings and sixpence a
volume; and that such a work as "Hallam's Middle Ages," is as cheap in
the London market as books can be made: yet all these pay their
authors, and are published in cheap editions, because they find it for
their interest. Under a community of copyright, the plates of these
very editions would be sent to New York, and the works would be in the
market at a slight advance upon the cost of press-work and paper--the
latter item being much less expensive here than in England.

But the nation pays for its cheap books more dearly still, when you
consider the effect of its