others to avail themselves of it without returning any compensation. As soon as the law declares that the profits arising from the multiplied copies of this invention shall not be taken by any one but the author, such profits immediately flow from the use of the invention; and before the enactments of positive law have so declared, the law of nature makes it clear, that these profits belong to him who has created and holds the invention, and who can withhold it from others, until by some pact or convention, express or implied, he has secured the compensation which he sees fit to demand.

It is not unworthy of remark, also, that public policy requires a recognition of the natural rights of authors, as the basis of legislation. It does so, because the highest policy of society is justice. There is, in the requirements of national character, the same high necessity for honesty and good faith, that lies with the whole weight of moral obligation upon the individual. Society cannot afford to be unjust. Its prosperity is the aggregate prosperity of its members. Its character, its peace and dignity, the amount of happiness which it may attain, or be the instrument of attaining to its members, depend directly upon the harmony that reigns through its internal relations, and upon the degree to which it has enforced the observance of justice and respect for the great maxims in which the essence of justice is enshrined. When society ceases to be just, it ceases to be safe. No infraction of a public principle

ever takes place, without being followed by retributive social evils. When, by a total neglect of the natural rights of authors, injustice is done to a class of conspicuous and important benefactors of their race, the violation of principle becomes the more glaring, and the injury to the moral sense of society more striking, from the species of ingratitude involved in the neglect. There is scarcely any civilized people, who would not be shocked by a proposal to withdraw all protection from the interests of literary property.

Public policy also requires a careful protection of the rights of authors, because literature flourishes most when it reaps the rewards consequent upon such protection. There can be no doubt that the body of literature, now extant in the English language, owes a vast deal to the acknowledgment of these rights, imperfect as it has sometimes been. Although no legislative protection existed before the reign of Queen Anne, there was a protection founded in an acknowledged common law right, and the practice of printers and booksellers, which may be traced as far back as the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The existing literature of England, of a date subsequent to that time, and the whole of that of America, have been produced under the stimulus afforded by a greater or less degree of security to the pecuniary interests of authors. It is not easy to say, with certainty, that any portion of this literature would not have been produced, if an author's exclusive right to

the proceeds of publication had never been admitted; nor is it easy to find many works, now classical in the language, or of an important character, which we know certainly were written without any view to profit, whether large or small. What we know certainly, is, that from Shakspeare to our own day, everything has been written under some state of the law, admitting an author's right, and that very few great authors have avoided or neglected all recompense for their writings, while the vast majority have written for money as well as fame.'

But it is not solely for the encouragement of genius in its transcendent displays, that it concerns the interests of society to protect the rights of authors. The great classes of compilers and scholars, whose works embody the learning of a country or an ageembracing the historian, the lexicographer, the critic and the commentator; the whole body of scientific writers, from the author of a mechanism of the heavens to the author of the last shilling arithmetic ; the various grades of writers in every department, from the higher votaries of letters to the day-laborers in the vineyard of knowledge, are all necessary to the formation of a national literature and the development of a general culture. All require that the fruits of their labor, like the fruits of other men's labor, should be under the protection of the law;

There is very little reason to doubt, that the right of authors was practically acknowledged as a com

mon law right, in the reign of Elizabeth. (See post, ch. 2.)

for like other men, they labor for subsistence and the comforts of life, and it is only when these are secured to them, that they can be expected with certainty to labor at all. Glory may be the reward of genius in solitary and irregular cases; but no man ever wrote a spelling-book or compiled an almanac for that unsubstantial and thankless commodity.

It remains to answer certain objections. In the first place, it may be asked, if the rights of authors are so clearly founded in natural justice, how is it that the law of nations, which recognizes and respects most of the rights of property, has not recognized the property of authors in their works, but has allowed them to be treated, in a foreign country, as if they were publici juris?

The law of nations is an admirable system of rules and principles, tending, more or less directly at different periods, to perfection, but not entirely complete, at present. It has long been accustomed to regard the title of movable property as sacred, wherever found; so that the real owner may pursue and reclaim it in any country with which his own is at peace. Even in the tumult of war, it exerts a searching and efficient energy, regulated by the maxims of a broad jurisprudence, to distinguish between neutral and belligerent interests; in order that nothing but the strict rights of warfare shall be allowed to divest the ownership of property. But the law of nations has not always been so careful; the time has been, when the goods of the merchant, cast

by tempestuous weather upon a foreign shore, have been accounted the lawful prey of any occupant. It is manifest, therefore, that the law of nations is a progressive system. The fact, that its principles have never been applied to a certain case, does not disprove the existence of principles, which might be made to regulate it.

At present, however, these principles have not been applied to the rights which we are now considering. The actual law of nations knows no exclusive right of an author to the proceeds of his work, except that which is enforced by the municipal law of his own country, which can operate nowhere but in its own jurisdiction. As soon as a copy of a book is landed in any foreign country, all complaint of its republication is, in the absence of a treaty, fruitless, because no means of redress exist, except under the law of the author's own country. It becomes public property, not because the justice of the case is changed, by the passage across a sea or a boundary, but because there are no means of enforcing the private right. The law of nations, being in great part a body of customary rules, depends upon the practice of nations; and what has not been practised, cannot be affirmed to be part of that law. But the real equity of the case, founded in the principles which govern other rights, requires that the author's interest in his book should be respected throughout the globe, as much as the interest of a merchant in a bale of goods. The natural justice of the case, there