ks?
But, Sir, will my honourable and learned friend tell me that this event,
which he has so often and so pathetically described, was caused by the
shortness of the term of copyright? Why, at that time, the duration of
copyright was longer than even he, at present, proposes to make it. The
monopoly lasted, not sixty years, but for ever. At the time at which
Milton's granddaughter asked charity, Milton's works were the exclusive
property of a bookseller. Within a few months of the day on which the
benefit was given at Garrick's theatre, the holder of the copyright of
Paradise Lost,--I think it was Tonson,--applied to the Court of Chancery
for an injunction against a bookseller who had published a cheap edition
of the great epic poem, and obtained the injunction. The representation
of Comus was, if I remember rightly, in 1750; the injunction in 1752.
Here, then, is a perfect illustration of the effect of long copyright.
Milton's works are the property of a single publisher. Everybody who
wants them must buy them at Tonson's shop, and at Tonson's price.
Whoever attempts to undersell Tonson is harassed with legal proceedings.
Thousands who would gladly possess a copy of Paradise Lost, must forego
that great enjoyment. And what, in the meantime, is the situation of the
only person for whom we can suppose that the author, protected at such
a cost to the public, was at all interested? She is reduced to utter
destitution. Milton's works are under a monopoly. Milton's granddaughter
is starving. The reader is pillaged; but the writer's family is not
enriched. Society is taxed doubly. It has to give an exorbitant price
for the poems; and it has at the same time to give alms to the only
surviving descendant of the poet.

But this is not all. I think it right, Sir, to call the attention of
the House to an evil, which is perhaps more to be apprehended when an
author's copyright remains in the hands of his family, than when it is
transferred to booksellers. I seriously fear that, if such a measure
as this should be adopted, many valuable works will be either totally
suppressed or grievously mutilated. I can prove that this danger is
not chimerical; and I am quite certain that, if the danger be real,
the safeguards which my honourable and learned friend has devised are
altogether nugatory. That the danger is not chimerical may easily be
shown. Most of us, I am sure, have known persons who, very erroneously
as I think, but from the best