e question as one of right. The law of
nature, according to them, gives to every man a sacred and indefeasible
property in his own ideas, in the fruits of his own reason and
imagination. The legislature has indeed the power to take away this
property, just as it has the power to pass an act of attainder for
cutting off an innocent man's head without a trial. But, as such an act
of attainder would be legal murder, so would an act invading the
right of an author to his copy be, according to these gentlemen, legal
robbery.

Now, Sir, if this be so, let justice be done, cost what it may. I am
not prepared, like my honourable and learned friend, to agree to a
compromise between right and expediency, and to commit an injustice for
the public convenience. But I must say, that his theory soars far beyond
the reach of my faculties. It is not necessary to go, on the present
occasion, into a metaphysical inquiry about the origin of the right of
property; and certainly nothing but the strongest necessity would lead
me to discuss a subject so likely to be distasteful to the House. I
agree, I own, with Paley in thinking that property is the creature of
the law, and that the law which creates property can be defended only
on this ground, that it is a law beneficial to mankind. But it is
unnecessary to debate that point. For, even if I believed in a natural
right of property, independent of utility and anterior to legislation, I
should still deny that this right could survive the original proprietor.
Few, I apprehend, even of those who have studied in the most mystical
and sentimental schools of moral philosophy, will be disposed to
maintain that there is a natural law of succession older and of higher
authority than any human code. If there be, it is quite certain that
we have abuses to reform much more serious than any connected with the
question of copyright. For this natural law can be only one; and the
modes of succession in the Queen's dominions are twenty. To go no
further than England, land generally descends to the eldest son. In Kent
the sons share and share alike. In many districts the youngest takes the
whole. Formerly a portion of a man's personal property was secured to
his family; and it was only of the residue that he could dispose by
will. Now he can dispose of the whole by will: but you limited his
power, a few years ago, by enacting that the will should not be valid
unless there were two witnesses. If a man dies inte