The Sun.
London, England, 1838-05-02 00:00:00

hard-flogged, anti half-starved negroes cannot be
rescued from the oppression of their inhuman task-
masters, because the Imperial Parliament has entered
into a contract with the traders in the flesh, blood,
and hones, of their fellow-creatures, which must on
no account be infringed I In like manner a grant
of the public money cannot be fcaumed, let circum-
stances arise ever so different from those under which
it was made, without violating a "solemn contract."
In short, whenever the advocates of improvement or
retrenchment raise their voices, they are met, and
clamoured down, with a " contract."

This was the only argument—if it deserve that
name—which the opponents of Mr. HUME'S mo-
tion could muster among them. Was there ever
a greater piece of jugglery attempted to be played
off upon the public ! If there was a contract with the
Duke of CUMBERLAND, what did his Royal High-
ness contract to do for his 21,000/. per annum ? This
is a point which we should like to have settled in
it is altogether inconceivable that there
should be only one party to a contract. And if
the Duke engaged to discharge certain duties for
the magnificent stipend allotted to him, out of the
taxes wrung from the scanty earnings of an over-
worked people, how, pray, does he acquit himself of
the obligation ? The plain common sense view of the
matter is this :—the grant was given to the Duke of
CUMBERLAND because he had no means of support.
It differs in nothing, as far as the character of the
thing is concerned, from any other pension ; and it is
impossible to advance any one good or even plausible
reason for continuing it a moment after the necessity
out of which it originally rose has ceased to exist.
That necessity ceased when the Duke of CUMBER-
LAND ascended the Throne of Hanover ; for it will
not, we presume, be contended that the Royal
revenues of that Kingdom are not adequate to his sup-
port ; and as his MAJESTY has not had sense or de-
cency enough to make a voluntary surrender of that
which was so liberally bestowed, but which he no
longer requires, it is the duty of Parliament to inter-
pose, and resume the grant.

The assertion of a Tory Print that Mr. R.
STEUART is to vacate his seat for Haddington, and
accept some permanent office, is, we have authority to
state, wholly without foundation. It is one of those
fabrications with which the Tory Prints continually
dupe their readers, and which are more convincing
proofs of the fertility of their imagination, than of
their respect for truth.

On the principle that it is but fair to bear what may
be said on the other side, we hare inserted elsewhere
a letter on the subject of Copyright. Without any
disrespect to our correspondent we must say, that after
a good deal of special pleading, he has, we think, left
the question, as nearly as possible, in the state in which
he found it. There may be some disadvantages, as
JACK BOOKWORM remarks, in recurring to first prin:
ciples, and discussing legislative measures on the ground
of abstract right. At the same time we can see no
great harm in fortifying the reasons for passing a law,
by shewing that it is strictly conformable to our re-
ceived notions of natural right. But it is rather
amusing to find a gentleman, after an exordium depre-
cating all reference to such principles, trying to found
an argument entirely upon them. Our correspondent's
view of an author's right in his thoughts is curious.
" So long," says he, " as a man's thoughts are lodged
in his own brain, they are, of course, his own. If,
however, he gives his thoughts to the world, the world,
or that portion of it which listens to him, has, as
I think, a natural right to adopt them ; and his
thoughts being assimilated to their minds, become
their thoughts, their property ; and they have a
natural right to think these thoughts, and also to com-
municate them, &c."
Now this is something like begging the whole question
at issue. Why should one man's thoughts become
another man's property because they are communicated
to him ? If they were once the original thinker's property
—and it is admitted they were pre-eminently so—how
does his right in them cease by their being made known
to other men ? Has he not a natural right to claim
them as his, whenever he can show his original title to
them ? If there were a common fund of thought, as
there is of light or air, to which all men might resort
freely, there might be some cogency in an argument
for an unrestricted use of thought. As man has a
natural right to breathe the air and use the light,
wherever he exists, organs of respiration and vision
having been provided for him by nature, so it might
in such a case, be said that he has a right to sup-
ply himself out of the common reservoir of thought.
But this not being so, and each man being furnished
with a separate apparatus for the creation of thought,
has a natural right only to those thoughts which this
apparatus can produce. Our correspondent's argu-
ment may be thus illustrated :—farmer Workhard rears

a considerable number of pigs. So long as he keeps hi,
pigs shut up in his own pig-yard they are of course
his own ; if, however, he sends them out upon the com-
mon, Squire Gripeall has a natural right to appropriate
them, and they being driven into his pig-yard, and as-
similated with his pigs, become his property.
As to the comparison which our correspondent
makes between the claim of an author and that of an
agriculturist selling a bushel of grain, and insisting
that the purchaser has no right to sow it, the analogy
is altogether false. The agriculturist is not the creator
of the grain, as the author is of the work. The
Author of Nature has transferred to others no copy-
right in any of his works, and the agriculturist, in the
case supposed, is merely_ the publisher unjustly claim-
ing an author's rights.
Our correspondent having completely failed, as we
think, to show that an author has no natural right in
his works, proceeds to discuss the question on the
ground of expediency, meaning by that term the greatest
good of the greatest number. Now, we arc not quite
sure, that if a natural right is established, it is possi-
ble to invalidate it by an appeal to expediency, inas-
much as the law of expediency, as we have defined it,
and as our correspondent seems to use it, is, in reality,
the law which nature follows in all her operations, as
far, at least, as we can understand those operations.
Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia disit. If,
then, it can be established, as we do think it can, that
an author has a natural right to a property in his works
(if he has a natural right to a property in anything) it
will follow that it cannot be for thegencral good to deprive
him of that right, or even to limit it in any degree ;
but, on the contrary, that the general good will be best
consulted by allowing him its free exercise. We have
not advocated the legal recognition of this unrestricted
right at present ; but we have abstained from doing
so, not from any doubt as to the policy and propriety
of such a law, but solely because we think that the
Legislature is not yet prepared to pass a measure of
full justice to the owners of mental property—namely,
such a measure as would put them on a footing of
equality with the owners of physical or corporeal pro-
perty. We hare, on this account, contented ourselves
with a slight improvement in the present state of the
law—with making a trifling movement in advance—
satisfied that the time is not far distant when full
justice will be done to literary men, and when it will be
regarded as one of the most astounding things in the
history of an enlightened age, that the very magnitude
of the benefit conferred by one class of the community
upon the other classes, should have beer► urged as an
unanswerable argument for denying that class the pro-
tection awarded by the laws to all the others I

A paragraph having more than once appeared in a
Sunday Paper, which has caused great uneasiness to