yright. You are quite right
in alluding to Mr. Putnam, who, I think, wrote the best pamphlet that
has been written on the subject; and there are others you did not name
who also deserve far more than I do for the labor they have expended and
the zeal they have shown on behalf of International Copyright,
particularly the secretaries of our international society--Mr. Lathrop
and Mr. G. W. Green. And since I could not very well avoid touching upon
the subject of International Copyright, I must say that all American
authors without exception have been in favor of it on the moral ground,
on the ground of simple justice to English authors. But there were a
great many local, topical considerations, as our ancestors used to call
them, that we were obliged to take into account, and which, perhaps, you
do not feel as keenly here as we did. But I think we may say that the
almost unanimous conclusion of American authors latterly has been that
we should be thankful to get any bill that recognized the principle of
international copyright, being confident that its practical application
would so recommend it to the American people that we should get
afterwards, if not every amendment of it that we desire, at least every
one that is humanly possible. I think that perhaps a little injustice
has been done to our side of the question; I think a little more heat
has been imported into it than was altogether wise. I am not so sure
that our American publishers were so much more wicked than their English
brethren would have been if they had had the chance. [Laughter.] I
cannot, I confess, accept with patience any imputation that implies that
there is anything in our climate or in our form of government that tends
to produce a lower standard of morality than in other countries. The
fact is that it has been partly due to a certain--may I speak of our
ancestors as having been qualified by a certain dulness? I mean no
disrespect, but I think it is due to the stupidity of our ancestors in
making a distinction between literary property and other property. That
has been at the root of the whole evil.

I, of course understand, as everybody understands, that all property is
the creature of municipal law. But you must remember that it is the
conquest of civilization, that when property passes beyond the
boundaries of that _municipium_ it is still sacred. It is not even yet
sacred in all respects and conditions. Literature, the property in an
idea, has b