ure to say that, when American books shall be as popular in England as English books are in the United States, copyright will no longer be withheld.
It will doubtless be urged that I am placing our government in an unenviable light; that selfishness and not right rules its conduct. I answer that all governments, under like conditions, would pursue a similar course. Great Britain may arrogate to herself national liberality for having opened her ports, with little or no restriction, to the commerce of the world; but the motives which prompted such liberality were as purely selfish as were those of the United States in fettering commerce by her high tariff. Great Britain, assured of her supremacy as the great manufacturer of the world, did not fear the competition of other manufacturers, whether protected or not; and she became, at once, the advocate and the exemplar of free trade, believing that other nations would reciprocate, and thus give greater encouragement to the commerce in which, as a nation, her chief interest lies. Disappointed in her expectations that other countries would follow her example, she is now considering the policy of abandoning "free trade" for what she calls "fair trade," self-interest again prompting this change of attitude toward other nations; and yet she is not in reality any more selfish in the one case than in the other.
Referring again to what is called the moral wrong of using the product of another's brain without remuneration, I would ask, "Why this special claim of a foreign author?" Does not our government send experts abroad to gain information on subjects of the greatest importance to our interests at home? Do not these experts closely examine the establishments, public and private, of the Old World and gain all the information possible in regard to them? Do they not visit the great manufactories in all their variety; the workshops, the docks, war-vessels, arsenals, colleges, schools, prisons, hospitals, and churches; and inquire into and observe the modes of foreign life, social, industrial, political, and religious? In short, do they not inform themselves of everything likely to be of benefit to their own country, and, although the information given them may have been the result of centuries of brain-labor, do their countrymen hesitate to appropriate such information to their own use and without pay? The fact is that, the intercommunication of nations gives advantages which isolation could not afford, and if such advantages include the spread of knowledge among the people, obtained either in the way I have here described, or by the cheap reprint of a foreign book, it would be difficult to show anything criminal in thus acquiring it.
In conclusion, it may be well to remark that, even in England, brain-property is not treated like that known as personal or real, for, while the latter has perpetual protection by law, the former has only protection within prescribed limits, the English copyright extending
