The Sun.
London, England, 1854-03-16 00:00:00

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.

We regret to find that the hopes which have been of
late entertained, that we should now have a just treaty
on international copyright between this country and the
United States, are about to be disappointed. The claims
of writers, in this country, to the protection of their in-
tellectual property, from the piracy to which it has been
subjected, are too just to be denied, and we had hoped
that " the great; pirate party" were about to sustain a
singular defeat.
It is a gross outrage on all justice between man and
man that authors should be robbed of the proper
rewards of their intellectual toil by men who can turn
the intellectual commodities of writers into the mer-
chandise on which they trade to their great advantage,
and for which they have never given any consideration.
The American Union, for all literary purposes, is like
Great Britain ; both countries are members of the same
Anglo-Saxon family, and the reading people, whether
under the British Crown or the President of the
Union, not only speak the same language, but read the
same books. It would be the interest of writers, on
both sides of the Atlantic, that they should regard the
Anglo-Saxons and the Anglo-Americans as the one pub-
lic for whom they write, and to whom they could look
for their common support. Nothing less than this would
meet the requirements of justice, and nothing less, come
when it may, will meet the demands of those who are
labouring in the fields of literature, and producing, by
sweat of the brain, the intellectual food by which minds
are entertained and nourished.

It was feared that Mr. Everett would be the instru-
ment made use of for the purpose of rendering the in-
ternational copyright treaty a mockery and a delusion ;
and we think he must have done his work to the perfect
contentment of the piratical party whose bidding he
seems willing to execute. Mr. Everett proposes, as an
amendment, that the right of property, or copyright,
shall be enjoyed in the United States, only in case of
such works of British authors as shall be stereotyped or
printed and published in the United States ; and that it
shall be enjoyed in Great Britain only in case of such
works of United States authors as shall be stereotyped,
or printed and published in Great Britain.
According to this plan, when a work is first published
in the country of the author, no right of property in the
same is to be enjoyed in the other country, unless
the re-publication takes place within three months from
the time of the first publication. The design of this
arrangement is obviously to play into the hands of pira-
tical booksellers, to render the treaty the means of con-
veying the least possible advantage to authors, and to
deprive of their gains to the smallest possible extent
those who have been accustomed to prey on the literary
toils of other people.
It is very easy to see that the object of the amend-
ment is to shut out from any benefit of the treaty all
those writers who are not already independent of
that treaty. All rising authors—the many who are de-
serving of name and fame, for which they are toiling,
but whose names have not yet acquired a commercial
value—are to be left without any benefit whatever by
the concessions which are to be made. Every one
knows, that among the multitude of English writers,
there are very few who would undertake to publish
in America a book within three months of its publication
in this country, or at that early period venture to have
a work stereotyped. All these persons are to be com-
pletely shut out from any benefit which is to be given by
the contemptible thing which is called an International
Copyright Treaty. We wonder that a man of Mr. Eve-
rett's standing as a literary man, should have consented
to act as he is doing in favour of the system which he
ought to be the foremost to denounce and bring to
nought.
. _ _

The only portion of our authors on whom the treaty
as modified professes to confer any advantage, are
those who are altogether independent of it. Our po-
pular writers, it is well known, can assign their works
to American publishers on their own terms, and secure
for themselves the substantial rewards to which they
are entitled, without having recourse to the treaty
with which it is proposed to favour them. It is to
the credit of those gentlemen, that if they take any
trouble in this matter, it is purely for the purpose of
establishing a just principle, and securing some ad-
vantages for others, their fellow-labourers, who do not
enjoy the honours to which they have attained.
We suppose that writers of this stamp will spurn
with becoming indignation the hollow pretence which
it is now attempted to palm on this country, and that,
rather than be hoodwinked by Mr. Everett, and the
privateers for whom he is acting, they will employ
their influence to let matters remain as they were in
all their patent injustice. We earnestly hope, that if
the treaty is sent to this country in the shape it is
likely to assume, it will be sent back by our Govern-
ment as it came ; and that the great pirate party on the
other side will find that, however successful they may
be in living on the brains of other people, they cannot
succeed in concealing from us their true character, or in
throwing over their practices the shield of inter-national
lea.
To illustrate the absurdity of the tendering Mr. Eve-
rett's amendment as a measure of justice to the authors
either of this country or of the United States, it is
quite enough, as has been suggested, to refer to the
case of Mrs. Stowe. No bookseller would have given
Mrs. Stowe a price for her unrivalled " Uncle Tom"
within the first three months of its completion ; and the
treaty which is under consideration would have been
entirely useless to that most popular writer, until she
had acquired the fame which would make her completely
independent of such a treaty. We perfectly agree with
the statement, that "America will no longer rob a
Macaulay, a Dicke-is, a Jerrold, and a Thackeray, be-
cause it cannot, but that it will continue to appropriate
the labours of younger men, because it can."
It would have been most gratifying if this great ques-
tion had been treated with an honest purpose, and if a
a measure had been framed which would have properly
adjusted the claims of the literary men of the two coun-
tries. Such a measure we should have hailed with
satisfaction, and we should have done all honour to the
men by whom it was carried. We are now satisfied
that the intellectual men of the United States are to
be left in a state of bondage to the buccaneers who
are growing rich on the pillage of other men's labours,
and we hope that this country will, with one loud voice
of honest indignation, resent to the effort made to
impose on its credulity by a most dishonest and con-
temptible sham.—Morning Advertiser.