is that the bread and butter are both stolen, and because theft is bad for those who lose their property, and worse for those who get it. A nation can not tolerate palpable dishonesty without vital injury to itself. One injustice leads to another, and demoralization spreads. Selfish advantages openly override correct principles, and then, worst of all, come the mental obliquity and confusion resulting from attempts to palliate and excuse injustice. If a flagrant wrong is long and widely practiced, there will always be plenty to rally for its defense—some dishonestly, from interested motives, and others with a senseless sincerity from innate crookedness, cloudiness, or eccentricity of mind. These crotchety, whimsical, and erratic intellects are found both at home and abroad, and they often prove capable of doing considerable mischief.
Matthew Arnold affords the last example of this mental freakishness, in his article on the copyright question, in the March "Fortnightly Review." The article has excited a good deal of comment, and no little commendation, but it seems to us eminently unsatisfactory. We find no fault with the conclusion at which he arrives, which was intimated years ago, when he joined fifty other English authors in recommending the scheme of international copyright, which originated in this country, and which there has been much reason for thinking could be practically carried out. But, while Mr. Arnold's decision is sound, we think it would have been wise if he had withheld his reasons for it. They are not such as will bring other men to the same result. They are such as will carry other men to the opposite conclusion. So far as logic is concerned, Mr. Arnold takes substantially the same ground as that taken by Mr. J. M. Stoddart, the Philadelphia publisher, who is engaged in pirating the "Encyclopædia Britannica." They both agree that nobody's rights are violated, as there are no rights in the case. Mr. Arnold's point of view in regard to copyright is quite his own. Here, as everywhere else, he is haunted by the spirit of "Philistinism." The undesirable practice of appropriating an author's works is a miserable piece of middle class indelicacy. "The spirit of the American community and Government is the spirit, I suppose, of a middle-class society of our race, and this is not a spirit of delicacy. One could not say that in their public acts they showed in general a spirit of delicacy; certainly they have not shown that spirit in dealing with authors."
Mr. Arnold pursues this thought more fully. He says: "The interests of English authors will never be safe in America until the community as a community gets the sense in a higher degree than it has now for acting with delicacy. It is the sense of delicacy which has to be appealed to, not the sense of honesty. Englishmen are fond of making the American appropriation of their books a question of honesty; they call the appropriation stealing; if an English author drops his handkerchief in Massachusetts they say the natives may not go off with it, but if he drops his poem they may. This style of talking is exaggerated and false; there is a breach of delicacy in reprinting the foreigner's poem without his consent, there is no breach of honesty. But a finely touched nature, in men or nations, will respect the sense of delicacy in itself, not less than the sense of honesty."
Now, there can not be the slightest objection to this appeal to the sense of delicacy and honor in the effort to secure legal protection to the property of authors. It may be that there are those who would be moved by this consideration and no other; and if Mr. Arnold had been content to devote his paper to this view of the case, there would have been no reason to complain of him.
