New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1853-03-17
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.
SO far as we are aware, the friends Of Inter.
national Copyright have had no agent in Wash
ington during the tendency of the treaties now
understood to be before the Senate. Wehear
that the other side are, or have been, strongly
represented there. We have been content
that the Senate should act on the question
without particle of extraneous influence;
our adversaries are perpetually seeking to
make outdoor capital to affect the course Of
the Senate. And while ii requires two-thirds
vote to rstify treaty, they protest against
any treaty on the subject, and insist that
nothing should be done, except by law enacted
BY both Houses of Congress. What they mean
is, Let US get rid of the action now threatened
somehow, and we shall have some new dodge
ready by the time the question comes up
again Now we are quite willing to cOncede
that we do not regard the treaty making power
as that under which it is most desirable that
the Rights of Authors should be affirmed Nay,
we 60 farther, and say we dislike the whole
business of Copyright Legislation, as well as
Negotiation. Thefundamentalaw ofthelan
the Common Law-Ought to guarantee to every
producer the products Of his own industry,
including just compensation from all who see
fit to use those products. Copyright Laws
Gas has been decided by the highest judi.
cial tribunal in Great Brittany do not
confer any privileges on Authors, but contrari-
wise serve to limit and abridge their natural
right to the fruits Of their own labor. Had
no Copyright Law ever been enacted in this
country, Macaulay, Dickens or Thackeray
might sell 70 an American publisher the exclu-
sive right to reprint one of his forthcoming
works, and that publisher could maintain at
common law his right so acquired against any
rival publisher who should attempt to in
fringe it. If such be the law of the case-as
we are well assured it isis it not monstrous
that special grant Of Copyright to our own
Authors should be held to absorb and subvert,
not merely those Authors natural right to
their own productions, but the rights also of
those who derive no protection from our Copy
right laws and are not even alluded TO therein
The vital facts which the Senate and Con-
gress ought to understand in the premises are
these--that all the clamor against Information
al Copyright originates with few extensive
aud wealthy publishers, who have fattened on
the system they now labor to uphold and
who have built up virtual monopoly of
the reprinting of popular British works as
they first issue from the press These men
instigste ali the cutlery about the enormous
prices at which books written in England will
be sold in this country if the right OF their
authors to control their republication here is
conceded and their Editors who propagate
these bugbears are nearly all men who were
openly and heartily on our side until they put
on the livery and accepted the pay of the great
publishing houses. The nonsense they are
prompted and paid TO utter about the import
ance Of cheap books, the tendency of Copy
right to put them beyond the reach of the
masses, &c, is refuted by facts within the
knowledge OF every one who VIII stop TO con-
slider. Is not Uncle Toms Cabin Copy
right work. And is it not TO be found every
where, and at very moderate prices Are not
nearly all our SchOolbOOks Copyright and
where eau YOU find cheaper or in the main bet.
ter books-that is, better suited to their pur-
posel We protest against che degrading,
scandalOus assumption that our people must
grovel in ignorance unless enabled TO read the
works Of living British Authors without paying
those Authors for their labor Ii is alike de-
void of truth and at war with our National
seli.respect. Ifnot another new British book
we're to be published in our Country for twenty
years, our people would find an abundance of
good neutrality-suspicious. quite as good as they
will under our present system. We are quite
too Colonial in our Literary tastes aud habits,
but not so utterly dependent on unpaid
British Authorship as the apOlogists of Lite
rary piracy represent us.
THE GREAT QUESTION IN EUROPE.
The paus from Eurona ia "a ,,-a .n.;o;,,. 1. Il .