AN APPEAL

TO AMERICAN AUTHORS AND THE AMERICAN PRESS

IN BEHALF OF AN INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.

Gentlemen:—You have the credit, at this moment, of ruling the world—at least your part of it; and cannot yet enact a single statute by which your share of worldly right and profit shall be secured to you. Walking, in the world’s eye, as strong and beautiful as angels, you cannot perform the day’s work, counted either in money or in bill-making influence, of a rude Missourian or a lean Atlantic citizen.

Aiding, as you do, by your inventive genius in all the great enterprises of the day—pushing forward every great and good undertaking to an issue of success—you lack the will or the skill to create a simple mill-contrivance by which your grain may be ground and bread furnished to your board.

You project, but do not realize. You sow, but do not reap. You sail to and fro—merchantmen and carriers to all the world of thought—the whole ocean over, but find no harbor and acquire no return. How much longer you will consent to keep the wheels of opinion in motion: to do the better part of the thinking and writing of these twenty-six States, without hire or fee, it rests with you to say. I merely put the case to you to see how it strikes you.

I address you in the mass, writers of books and framers of paragraphs together, because, at bottom, all who wield the pen have interests in common; and because I am anxious (I confess it) to have the whole force of the Press, whatever shape it takes, combined and consolidated against an injustice which could not live an hour if the Press knew its rights and its strength. The rights and the respectability of the one are, in the end, the rights and the respectability of the other; based in both cases on the worth and dignity of literary property.

No community is secure, it seems to me, where any law or fundamental right is systematically violated.

Either by instant vindication, through blood, and pillage, and massacre; or by the more silent and deadlier agency of the opposite wrong and a whole brood of fierce allies sprung from its loins, is this truth, at all times, asserted and made good. From the original wrong, lying in many cases close to the heart of society, there spreads a secret and invisible atmosphere of pestilence, in which all kindred rights moulder and decay, until their life at last goes out at a moment when no man had guessed at such a result. Neither statesmen nor people are, therefore, wise in tampering with a single principle: or in yielding a jot of the immutable truth to plausible emergency or the fair-seeming visage of an immediate good.

The law of property, in all its relations and aspects, is one of these primary anchors and fastenings of the social frame. And what evils, I am asked, have grown from the alleged neglect of literary property? I will mention one by way of illustration.

You are all of you aware, by this time, that the extensive printing and publishing establishment of Harper & Brothers, Cliff street, New York, was burned in the early part of June; and that a heavy loss accrued to them from the burning.

The fire was attributed, immediately after it occured, by the public prints to the hand of design. “It is supposed that one object of the incendiaries was to obtain copies of a new novel, by James, of which the Messrs. Harper had the exclusive possession.” Another paper enlarges this statement—“we see suspicions expressed that the object was to get possession of a new novel, ‘Morley Ernstein,’ which was in sheets, for cheap publication.” Here is a natural, logical sequence, and just such a one as might have been expected. If the conjecture should not prove a fact, it ought to be one, because this is just the period and the very order in which we might expect an incident of this kind to occur; perhaps not on quite so large a scale, nor with the necessary melo-dramatic admixture of fire. It might have been a plain burglary, prying a ware-house door open with a bar, for a copy; or, knocking a man over, at the edge of evening, and plucking the sheets from under his arm.

Piracy and burning are, perhaps, so nearly akin that, after all, they have wrought out the sequence more naturally than if it had been left to the friends of copyright to suggest to them in what order they should occur. In Elia’s legend, a building is burned that a famishing Chinaman may have roast pig; in the reality of the present fire a publisher’s warehouse was put in flames, not only to prevent a famishing author from having roast pig in presenti, but also, by a decisive blow, to further the good principle, that there should be no roast pig (nor even salt and a radish) for famishing authors in all future time. Let it not be said I press this point, a mere surmise, too far. Surmise as it is, it receives countenance and consistency from a previous fact, namely, that one of the large republishing newspapers was charged, not long since, by the other—and this was made a matter for the Sessions—with the felony of abstracting the sheets of an English work from the office of its rival. This—an invasion of property—is only one of the external evils growing out of a false and lawless state of things. Of others which strike deeper; which create confusion and error of opinion; which tend to unsettle the lines that divide nation from nation; to obliterate the traits and features which give us a characteristic individuality as a nation—there will be another and more becoming opportunity to speak.

As it is, by fair means or foul, the weekly newspaper press, with its broad sheet spread to the breeze, is making great head against the slow-sailing progress of such as trust to the more regular trade-winds for their speed. And this, fortunately (as error cannot long abide in itself,) is creating changes of opinion of infinite advantage to the great cause of international copyright.

A little while ago, we had the publishers petitioning and declaiming against an international copyright, (I forget what arguments they employed;) and, lo! their breath is scarcely spent when the ground slides from under them, and the whole publishing business—at least a considerable section of it—which they meant to uphold by false and hollow props, has tumbled into chaos, and an organic change has passed through the world of publication. Now they begin—and we are glad to have so powerful and so respectable a body convert to our side, on whatever terms—to see the matter in a new light; the affection for the people, and the cheap enlightenment of the people, and the people’s wives and children, which they made bold (out of an exceeding philanthropy) to proclaim in market-places and the lobbies of Congress, is wonderfully dwindled.

It isn’t a pleasant thing, after all, to have one’s printing-house and bindery burned to the ground, even for so laudable an object. Suppose we have the law: a little civilized recognition of the rights of authors (merely by way of clincher, however, to the absolute, primary and indefeasible rights of publishers) might be an agreeable change from this barbarous system of non-protection. The old plan, it must be admitted, has its disadvantages. Let’s have the law! And here you may suppose the hats of certain old, respected and enterprising publishers to rise into the air, in a sort of fervor or ecstasy, which it is entirely out of their power to control.

Is there or is there not a property in a book: a primitive, real, fundamental right in its ownership as in any estate or property? Often and clearly as this question has been determined, the opponents of a law, by stress of argument, are driven upon denying it over and over again, and making use of every sort of ridiculous and irrelevant illustration to crowd the right out of the way. They fly into all corners of creation in pursuit of an analogy, and come back without as much as a sparrow in their bag.

One of them, for example, says, “We buy a new foreign book; it is ours; we multiply copies and diffuse its advantages. We also buy a bushel of foreign wheat, before unknown to us; we cultivate, increase it, and spread its use over the country. Where is the difference? If one is stealing, the other is so. Nonsense! neither is stealing. They are both praiseworthy acts, beneficial to mankind, injurious to nobody, right and just in themselves, and commendable in the sight of God.” This reasoner, of a pious inclination and most excellent moral tendencies, has made but a single error—he thinks the type, stitching and paper are THE BOOK! He forgets that when you buy a book you do not buy the whole body of its thoughts in their entire breadth and construction, to be yours in fee simple for all uses, (if you did, the vender would be guilty of a fraud in selling more than a single copy of any one work;) but simply the usufruct of the book as a reader. Any processes of your own mind exerted upon that work, or parts of it, make the result, so far, your legitimate property, and is one of the incidents of your purchase. To reprint the work in any shape, as a complete, symmetrical composition, is a violation of the original contract between the vender and yourself; whether it be in folio or duodecimo, in the form of newspaper or pamphlet—there lies THE BOOK, unchanged by any action of your own mind. The wheat, of which you have purchased the bushel, in the mean time has been sown in your field, (there’s a difference to begin;) which has been prepared by your plough and plough-horse for its reception; the kindly dews and rains of heaven—which would answer to the genial inspirations and movements of the mind, in the other case—descend upon it; it is guarded by walls and hedges from inroad; the weeds and tares which would fain choke it are plucked out by a careful hand; at last it is reaped and gathered in by the harvestman to his garners. The one bushel has become a thousand; but it has passed through a thousand appropriating and fructifying processes to swell it to that extent. It has not been merely poured out of one bushel measure into another bushel measure. Though the one plough the earth, and the other plough the sea, the world will recognize a distinction, a delicate line of demarcation between farmer (man’s first occupation) and pirate (his last.) The republishers—the proprietors of the mammoth press—groan under the aspersion of piracy and pillage laid at their door: they complain of the harshness of epithet which denounces them as Kyds and MacGregors. They must bear in mind that authors and republishers are likely to regard this question from very different points of view: that the poor writer, regarding himself as plundered, defrauded of a positive right, and of a property as real and substantial as guineas, or dollars, or doubloons, may feel a soreness of which the other party, living as he does on the denial of that right, and the seizure of that property, without charge or cost, may not be quite as susceptible. Let us make an effort to bring this point home to these gentlemen in an obvious and intelligible illustration.

How would the worthy proprietors of “The Brother Jonathan” like it, if, when their editions of Barnaby Rudge or Zanoni had been carefully worked off, at some expense of composition, paper and press-work, and lay ready folded in their office for delivery: How would they be pleased if, just at that moment, when the newsboys were gathered at the office door, pitching their throats for the new cry, a gang of stout-handed fellows should descend upon their premises, and without as much as “by your leave,” or, “gentlemen an you will!” sweep the entire edition off, bear it into the next street, and there proceed to issue and vend it with the utmost imaginable steadiness of aspect, with an equanimity of demeanor quite edifying and perfect? Why, gentlemen, to speak the truth plainly, you would have a hue-and-cry around the corner in an instant! Your ejaculations of thief, robber and burglar would know no pause till you were compelled to give over for very lack of breath; and the whole community would be startled, at its breakfast the next morning, by an appeal to its moral sensibilities so loud and lightning-like, that the coffee would be unpalatable, and the very toast turn to a cinder in the mouth.

Now, it should be borne in mind that the large weekly press, whose influence we are anxious to counteract, and whose interest is rapidly becoming the leading one in opposition to the proposed law, has arisen since the agitation of this question; has embarked its capital, and has grown to its present power and influence in the very teeth of a solemn protest of the authors whose labors they appropriate. It should also, in fairness, be added that some members of this huge fraternity only avail themselves of this law as it now stands, as they think they have a right, and hold themselves ready to abandon the field or adapt themselves to the change whenever a new law requires it; in the mean time, meeting the question fairly, and reasoning it through in good temper. The very paper which I have employed in illustration is chargeable with no offence against literature, society, or good morals, save the single taint of appropriating the labors of authors without pay, and defending the appropriation as matter of strict right and propriety. Only in a community where a contempt for literary rights has been engendered by long mal-practice, could such sentiments have obtained lodgment in minds of general fairness and honesty.

If the hostility to a law of reciprocal copyright be as deep rooted as is alleged, why has there not been some able argument (raised above sordid considerations, and looking wide and far upon the question in all its vast bearings) expounding to us the grounds on which this professed antagonism is based? When we ask them for a syllogism they give us an assertion. “My dear sir, how can you waste time, perplexing yourself and the public with this barren question! We supply readers with a novel, a good three-volume novel, for a shilling; and as long as we do that they will remain deaf to all your appeals. The argumentum ad crumenam, the syllogism of the pocket has, in all ages, carried the sway!” This is the head and front of their declamation, of their invective and their facts. This is the Fact! This boulder (offered in lieu of bread) they beg us of the author-tribe to digest: this is their bulwark, their fortress—no, their burrow rather—into which they skulk at the approach of a poor author, quill in hand, prepared to drive off the game—feræ naturæ—that lay waste his preserves and make free in his clover-field.

Now of all arguments this of cheapness is most questionable and unsafe. It has a comely and alluring visage, is smooth-spoken and full of promise, but we must have a caution where it may lead us, for it is as full of trick and foul play as a canting quaker; as precarious a foothold as the trap of the scaffold the minute before the check is slipped. Cheap and good are a pleasant partnership: but it does not happen that they always do business together. Taking cheapness as our guide and conductor, we can readily make our way, in imagination, to a publishing shop where the principle is expanded into a pleasing practical illustration. The shop is of course in a cellar, (rent twelve shillings a quarter;) the attendant is a second-hand man cast off from the current population of the upper world into this depository (wages seven shillings a week;) his hat, being still on the cheap tendency, has followed him out of Chatham street in company with a coat rejected of seven owners, the last of whom was a dustman, trowsers to match and boots borrowed of a pauper (cost of the entire outfit five shillings and a penny;) behind a counter that totters to the earth at an expense of five pence or more for repairs, he dispenses the frugal Literature of which he is the genius—the paper being of such an exquisite delicacy and cheapness that a good eye, by glancing through, can read both sides at once; the purchaser plunges down with a sixpence (most economical of small coin) in his pocket, and bears off, in a triumphant apotheosis, four and twenty columns to be read by the light of a tallow twopenny that sputters cheapness as it burns. This is the glory of the age; the crowning honor and triumph of America. Who would have the heart or the hardihood to blur that fair picture of popular knowledge and cheap enjoyment? Why, sirs—to speak a serious word or two in your ear—this plea of cheapness—a miserable escape at best, where a question of right and wrong is concerned—pushed to its extreme (and as cheapness is urged as the sole criterion and measure of advantage, we are warranted in so doing,) would drive literature to the almanac, which can be afforded at a penny; and the age of the brown ballad would return upon us with all its primitive graces of an unclean sheet, a cloudy typography, and a style of thought and expression quite as pure and lucid.

Pass a copyright bill and we are told, “we should soon learn the difference between £1 10, the London price of Bulwer’s Zanoni, and the American price of twenty-five cents.” How long—it is triumphantly asked—would our “reading public, almost commensurate with the entire population, continue at such a rate?”—what if it did not last a minute? Truth and honesty are of a little more worth than a reading public even as wide as the borders of the land. Of the elevation of the people—the instruction of the people, I hold myself a friend—no man more: but I do not propose to begin their enlightenment with a new version of the decalogue; so amended as to admit all the opposites against which it is directed, as virtues which we are enjoined to cultivate.

Suppose these gentlemen do furnish your literature at a low price by dint of paying the author nothing, they should bear in mind that there is a place where it is paid for, or it would most assuredly prove as miserable as it is cheap. The literature is valuable, not because they spread it before the world in large sheets, every Saturday morning, at sixpence a copy; but because there happened to be in another country certain enterprising publishers, of a somewhat different stamp, who thought it worth their while to cheer the writer in his labors by paying him a good round sum for his copyright. I repeat it, an unpaid literature cannot contend with a paid one; nor can it—while money is a representative of value and a motive of exertion—be as good. Do I imagine then that an international law will create great writers? Not at all. Under any law—oppressed by whatever bondage or tyranny custom chooses to lay upon them—men of great genius will struggle into light and cast before the world the thoughts with which their own souls have been moved. They will speak though mountains pressed upon them. But there is a wide class—comprising the body of a national literature—who can claim no such power; essayists, philosophers, whose impulses are not great, periodical writers—all are silent when the law and the trade fail to befriend them. It is these that need the constant stimulus—the genial inspiration (denied to them in any great measure by Nature) of pay. It is the shining gold—decry it as we may—that breeds the shining thought.

It may be asked, how does this question affect the Press? The Press, forming a part of the great body of writers, is affected by whatever affects the writers of books; for the bond by which the entire brotherhood is held together, is so close that it cannot be struck in any part without feeling the shock in its whole length. The same injustice by which the author falls in station and place, drags down the journalist. The rights of all who use the pen are rights in common; varying only in degree, and, as they may be affected from time to time, by circumstances of the hour or day. Beyond this the actual and immediate pressure of a vast amount of reading from abroad, poured upon us without limit or regulation, begins to be felt by the daily and weekly Press. They find attention drawn off from the article or political speculation in their own columns, prepared with care and judgment, to the cheap reprint; and are driven upon abandoning the field or joining in a pernicious system of unpaid appropriation against which their better judgment revolts.

I now close this Appeal, and in doing so I would venture to urge upon you the importance of concert and a steady action in behalf of this law, at all times and in all places where you are called on to employ that sacred instrument of thought, whose immunities are so grossly outraged.

The popular mind has, in this country, made wonderful advances in the appreciation of political truths and principles. There is no reason why it should not make an equal—though perhaps a later—progress in truths that relate to literature and art. The popular mind, as all our institutions require, is essentially just and true; and, once enlightened by a sufficient array of facts, and with time to arrange and digest them, will act with energy and wisdom—on this as on all other questions of which it is the arbiter. Depend upon it this bill, although adversely regarded by your Senate and Representatives at this time, will ultimately triumph. It will go up to the Senate-chamber, year after year, with new facts, pleading for it with an urgency which considerate legislators cannot resist. In the mean time it is your duty, as I trust it is your desire, to enlighten the general mind as to the truths on which I have ventured to insist. Seize the instant. In town, in homestead and city, let these principles be spread as wide as the writings they would protect; and search, with a fearless eye, the national heart to find whether there be not some kindly corner where it is willing the seeds of a national literature should be lodged. Speaking in the accents of persuasion with which God and Nature have endowed you; and through the organs of opinion which every one of you may, more or less, command—you cannot be long resisted. Together, in a phalanx, before which kings and princes grow pale, enter upon the mighty task. Hand in hand, voice answering to voice, in tones of mutual trust and cheerful hope press forward in the noble labor to which you are summoned. That Union which, in politics and war, is Strength, will prove in Literature, as well, your champion and deliverer.

CORNELIUS MATHEWS.

New York, June, 1842.