crease the tax, if it can be shown that by so doing I should
proportionally increase the bounty. My complaint is, that my honourable
and learned friend doubles, triples, quadruples, the tax, and makes
scarcely any perceptible addition to the bounty. Why, Sir, what is the
additional amount of taxation which would have been levied on the public
for Dr Johnson's works alone, if my honourable and learned friend's
bill had been the law of the land? I have not data sufficient to form
an opinion. But I am confident that the taxation on his Dictionary alone
would have amounted to many thousands of pounds. In reckoning the whole
additional sum which the holders of his copyrights would have taken
out of the pockets of the public during the last half century at twenty
thousand pounds, I feel satisfied that I very greatly underrate it. Now,
I again say that I think it but fair that we should pay twenty thousand
pounds in consideration of twenty thousand pounds' worth of pleasure and
encouragement received by Dr Johnson. But I think it very hard that we
should pay twenty thousand pounds for what he would not have valued at
five shillings.

My honourable and learned friend dwells on the claims of the posterity
of great writers. Undoubtedly, Sir, it would be very pleasing to see a
descendant of Shakespeare living in opulence on the fruits of his great
ancestor's genius. A house maintained in splendour by such a patrimony
would be a more interesting and striking object than Blenheim is to us,
or than Strathfieldsaye will be to our children. But, unhappily, it is
scarcely possible that, under any system, such a thing can come to pass.
My honourable and learned friend does not propose that copyright shall
descend to the eldest son, or shall be bound up by irrecoverable entail.
It is to be merely personal property. It is therefore highly improbable
that it will descend during sixty years or half that term from parent to
child. The chance is that more people than one will have an interest in
it. They will in all probability sell it and divide the proceeds. The
price which a bookseller will give for it will bear no proportion to the
sum which he will afterwards draw from the public, if his speculation
proves successful. He will give little, if anything, more for a term of
sixty years than for a term of thirty or five and twenty. The present
value of a distant advantage is always small; but when there is great
room to doubt whether a distant