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

THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT.

Mr. Wordsworth has addressed the following letter to
Sergeant Talfourd on his proposed Bill for the amendment
of the law of copyright :

TO SERGEANT TALTOURD, M.P.

Rydal Mount, April 18, 1838.
MT DEAR Sin,—A strong opposition, which has manifested
itself by public meetings and petitions to the House of Com-
mons, having started up among printers, publishers, and others
to your Bill for amendinethe law of copyrights, and no like
counter-movement being made by authors on their part, it has
been suggested to me, from quarters entitled to great respect,
that it might be of service if, along with a most distinguished
literary friend, I should present a petition to Parliament, pray-
ing that the Bill may pass, or at least one in favour of its
principle. This compliment has no doubt been paid me as
one amongst the oldest of living writers, and one, therefore,
whose heirs must, in course of nature, be injured sooner than
those of younger men, if the proposed measure be rejected.
You will not be surprised if I feel some scruple in taking a step,
though so well recommended, on account of an aversion to
appear prominently in any public question, and because I am
loath to think so unfavourably of Parliament as to deem that
it requires petitions from authors as a ground for grant-
ing them a privilege the justice of which is so obvious. I
cannot bring myself to suppose that the mere shadows
of argument advanced by printers and publishers against
the claims of a class to whom they owe the respectability of
their condition, if not their very existence, should avail
with any intelligent and disinterested assembly. Yet fur
ther am I averse thus to petition Parliament because I
would not ask as an individual suppliant, or with a single
associate, what in equity I consider to be the right of a
class, and for a much longer period than that defined in
your bill—for ever. Such right as you have stated in your
admirable speech, was acknowledged by the common law
of England ; and let them who have cried out so loudly
against the extension of the term as is now proposed,
show cause why that original right should not be restored.
The onus clearly rests with them to do so ; but they have
not attempted it, and are glad to take shelter under the
statute law as it now stands, which is a composition or
compromise between two opinions ; the extreme point of
ono being that, by giving his thoughts to the world, an author
abandons all light to consider the vehicle as private property ;
and of the other, that he has the right in perpetuity, that de-
scends to his heirs, and is transferable to those to whom he or
they may assign it.
This right I bold to be more deeply inherent in that
species •f property than in any other, though I am aware that
many persons, perceiving wherein it differs from acquisitions
made in trade and commerce, &c., have contended that the
law in respect to literature ought to remain upon the same
footing as that which regards the profits of mechanical inven-
tions and chemical discoveries ; but that this is an utter fallacy
might easily be proved.
From the considerations above stated I decline to petition,
as suggested,
g and content myself, in the silence of others
judgment, so that at least, my dear sir, you may not be
liable to be treated as a volunteer intruding without wish or
seur'enetsittele to speak, with the public declaration of my
dd
sanctionexpressed by any one of the class whose
i s and
rights openlyiiiterests you have, so much to your honour,
it
stepped forward to maintain. Here this letter shall close, its
purpose being
e answered ; for no general argument from me,
and no statement of facts belonging to my own case, and
which have come to my knowledge, with respect to my illus-
trious friends Coleridge, Scott, Southey, and others, would
avail to produce conviction where that has not been effected
by ycur unrivalled speech made upon your first introduction
of the Bill into the House of Commons, and by reasonings
which have lately been set forth with great ability by writers in
the public journals, and who were more at liberty to enter
into details than you could be while treating the subject before
Parliament.
Should your Bill be overborne, which I cannot allow my-
self to fear, by the interested opposition now at work, justice
nevertheless, sooner or later, must triumph ; and at all events
the respect and gratitude which authors feel towards you and
your coadjutors upon this occasion will be cherished by them
to the last hour of their lives.
I have the honour to be, my dear Sir, faithfully yours,
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

LAW OF COPYRIGHT.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.
SIR—I venture to make the following observations on the
important Bill before Parliament, touching literary property,
which appears to met o be
supported by most fallacious
reasoning.
lelgidsolatnivoet mdie,nasurthestton the
In the first place, and as. a general rule, much caution
high ground
principles of jus-
tice
and truth, and keep our standby them. But at the same
should be obscorfve
when consent subsists on these fundamental •
time, even
i'ilbisnt rat discussing
right.
may arise when we must recur to the first • 31- cases
the most extravagant divergence and most unseemly arro-
gance and dogmatism will be exhibited in the application of
out of the necessary vagueness of the terms in
w
propositions are expressed, and the proneness of
men to take advantage of this latitude, by urging their private
interests, passions or prejudices, on the ostensible grounds of
duty and morality.
In more specific relation to the case under view, there ap-
pears to me the most palpable absurdity and contradiction in
them, arising
general arisin
terms, in the very idea of a natural right pertaining to any-
thing, not only so immaterial and intangible, but so eminently
artificial as literary property. If I mistake not, some of the
soundest writers on jurisprudence, deserting the abstract po-
sition as unsafe, if not untenable, have seen fit to support the
right to property of all kinds on the broader, more practical,
and more definite basis of expediency, that is the general good,
as recognized by the law ; and that, even with respect to pro-
perty in land, which in England enjoys the singular distinction
of being termed " real property." As to literary property, it
would have been no easy task for a prophet who lived only
two or three hundred years ago to convey any notion of it to
his contemporaries; and more difficult still before the inven-
tion of printing. And I cannot but think that much dulness
would have been evinced, even by " Rome's least mortal
inind"—the bright, the acute, the profound mind of Tully_
disciplined as it was in legal training, and not less friendly to
learning than even Mr. Sergeant Talfourd's, (whom, however,
I do not mean to sneer at), had a precursor of that Learned
Gentleman endeavoured to persuade him, that some obscure
descendant of Plato, in the tenth generation , had a natural
right to inhibit him from employing
hisfreed man to transcribe
the symposium.
If
my memory serves me right, Mr. Talfourd, in his speech
in Parliament, last year, asserted that his Bill went merely to
restore some of the more extensive rights conferred on
authors by the common law. This refers us to a period pre-
ceding the invention of Guttenburg. How the regulation of
printing could be provided for by laws which sprang gradually
out of common occasions, long before the invention of the art—
or how such a rude jurisprudence could contemplate the com-
plex cases rising out of an entirely new set of things—passes
my comprehension. But the attempt to draw such a deduc-
tion corroborates a preceding observation, as affording an in-
stance of the
plastic ingenuity which, in the words of Bishop
Butler, " can make anything out of anything."
The true state of the case appears to me to be this. So
long as a man's thoughts are lodged in his brains, they are of
course his own, and his own by pre-eminence of right. In
like manner, if he commits them to paper, and keeps the ma-
nuscript locked up in his desk, no one is entitled to infringe upon
it or its contents. If, however, he gives his thoughts to the worl,i,

the world, or that portion of it which listens to him, has, as /think,
a natural right to adopt them ; and his thoughts, being assimi.
lated to their minds, become their thcughts, their property ;
and they hare a natural right to think these thoughts, and
also to communicate them, for the counsel, improvement, or
amusement of their associates;or to all whom they are interested
in pleasing or instructing, or to all the rest of the world, if they
are actuated by universal benevolence. The mode of commu-
nication cannot affect the principle as a general one, and one
of ownatural right; although, in an artificial state of
'pact...
society, one pa7ticillOf mos/n incidentally involve pi- cu..
riiary relations. Thereford, if #1 plthi,' 'rives me. or sells me
his thoughts, whether in manusetipf of rn .book, I
have, I conceive, a natural right to read that book:°
friend; my
or to employ my own time, pens and ink, in trans
scribing it for him ; or to use types and a printin,g-press for
the purpose, which arc merely copying instruments, of some-
what more complex construction than pens. If I have a
right to serve my friend in this way, no one is entitled to en-
quire whether he repays me with mere thanks, or with good
'Aces, or with more solid considerations ; nor is any one en-
titled to circumscribe the number of my friends.
jk, an illustration, suppose an agriculturist sells me a bushel
of wheat, would he have any natural right to prevent me from
sowing )t- instead pf eating it, on the pretext, that by bring-
ing the ten itshtls of pspduce to market I should injure him
and his family in ths!. &is of his next year's crop ?
Now, I cannot see that It author in the one case has
any better natural right to interfere, vrith my eopyirg his book,
than the farmer has to interdict me sowing his grain ; and, in
either case, disposing according to my will of the prod ice of
my own capital and industry.
Are we to conclude then that all copyright laws are unjust?
No. While abstract justice does not require, neither does it
condemn them. The question is purely one of expediency,
which I have defined above to be the public good.
Now, granting the beneficial effects of literature (using the
term in its widest sense, as embracing works on Religion,
Philosophy, Science, Poetry, &c.) on the happiness and well-
being of a nation, the object of legislative interference evi-
dently ought to be to provide, Ist., For its production, and
in the highest degree of excellence; and 2d., For its most
general diffusion.
(1.) To secure the first of these objects, pecuniary reward
is one important stimulus in a large proportion of ins!ances,
and in others it affords the author the sole or chief
means of devoting the necessary time to composition and the
preparatory studies. A monopoly of the sale of his book for
himself or his assignees is one of the most obvious modes of
providing this remuneration : it is snore easily regulated than
any other that could be devised, because self-adjusted, and
proportioned to the sale, and, therefore, in some degree at
least, to the merits of the book. And though the sale of a book
is frequently not the best criterion of its real value, it would
scarcely ,be possible to replace this measure of literary reward
by any substitute, likely to prove generally so fair and satis-
factory. Assuming that the higher the pecuniary stimulus, the
more fully will the first object be accomplished, it would follow
on the ground of expediency that the author should enjoy the
same absolute and perpetual property in the copyright which
some claim for him on abstract principles.
(2.) But the diffusion of a work bears a direct ratio to its
cheapness. Nay more ; the increase of circulation is proved
to be frequently much greater than in exact proportion to the
decrease of price ; and in like manner cheapness is promoted
by competition. To accomplish the second object, considered
apart, all restrictions ought to be abolished.
The problem now seems to be reduced to the question how
to combine both objects so as to compass the highest useful
effect? A limited copyright seems the solution. But how
limited ? This is a case of degree, and like all questions of
more or less may furnish interminable debate to controver-
sialists of spirit and pluck, and to them I leave it ; only pro-
testing that the onus probandi in all legal and logical fairness
lies on those who advocate the change.
The cases of Milton and Thomson prove nothing against the
law as if exists now. In the seventeenth and early part of the
eighteenth centuries, the law of copyright seems to have been
arbitrary and imperfectly ascertained, and deficient in stringency
and in the executory principle.
Now-a-days the law works well for all parties. Hundreds
gain a decent livelihood by their pens, and some grow rich.
With living authors Grub-street is.only a figure of speech;
it is a locality of literary history. They have read of it as they
have read of the Roman Forum ; their associations may lead
them to visit the one as the other. But who is the writer of
even mediocre talents actually domiciled within its precincts ?
Why, a modern travelled cockney shall sooner find the Nine
famous Blue-stockings of old times back at their haunts on
Parnassus. If there be a seeming exception, a hundred to
one he is a poor author rather than an author in poverty.
It is said that an extension of the copyright of Sir W.
Scott's works would clear off the incumbrances on Abbotsford.
But did not that wonderful man, under the existing laws, ac-
tually receive enormous sums for his writings, sufficient not
only for subsistence—for stimulus—but ample enough to be ac-
counted a generous testimony to his genius, so far as money is
concerned. If the wealth he acquired was dissipated by im-
prudent speculation or misfortune, that is no fault of the law.
The case of Wordsworth is different—a writer of original
powers of a peculiar cast, the beauties of whose writings lie
deep, and are slowly discovered as they create the taste which
appreciates them. But here again the law is not to blame ;
nor are the public interests in either way prejudiced by it.
An author who will not or cannot write, except for pecuniary
reward, will scarcely be content with the chance of its being
forthcoming to benefit his posterity years after his death, for
if the public approbation is not awarded within eight and-
twenty-years, its ultimate :manifestation must be, at best, a
matter of doubt. Still however, a special interposition might
be devised to meet such cases; for instance one analogous to
that for the extension of patents.
I hare only to add in conclusion, that should any enter-
prising and discerning publisher or publishers be desirous to
reprint this letter, they have severally my free permission to
do so, after the expiration of twenty-eight years from the date
thereof, whether Mr. Talfourd's Bill do pass or not; as wit-
ness the hand of JACK BOOKWORM.
April 17, 1838.

FROM LAST NIGHT'S GAZETTE.

OFFICE OF ORDNANCE, APRIL 30.

Royal Regiment of Artillery—Second Captain T. R. Cookson
to be Captain, vice Lawler, retired on half-pay ; First Lieutenant
A. Tulloh to be Second Captain, vice Cookson ; Second Lieu-
tenant A. Oldfield, to be First Lieutenant, vice Tulloh, April 20.

Commission by the Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire.
William Fawkener Chetwynd, Esq. to be Deputy Lieutenant,
April 24.
_ _ _

Commission by the Lord Lieutenant of the County of Lanark.
Royal Lanarkshire Regiment of Militia.—The lion. C. A. Mur-
ray to be Lieutenant, April 19.
Commissions by the Lord Lieutenant of the County of Nottingham.
Clumber Troop of Sherwood Rangers.—Lord W. P. Clinton to
be Captain, vice F. Hall, resigned; E. Unwin, Gent., to be First
Lieutenant, vice Lord W. P. Clinton, promoted ; T. White,
Gent., to be Cornet, April 11.
Mansfield Troop of Sherwood Rangers.—Godfrey Tallents,
Gent., to be First Lieutenant; Charles Colville, Gent., to be
Second Lieutenant, vice Godfrey Tallents, promoted, April 11.