New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1853-12-22
CAREY on COPYRIGHT.

Senator from Pennsylvania long aud plausible pro-
test against international Copyright Having hitherto
done what we could TO give force and emphasis TO Dir
Careys political in,ulcations we feel bound to show
WHY and wherein this letter is faacOus and mistaken.
We cannot, of course. consider every proposition en-
bodied in pamphlet of seventytwo octave pages but
we shall try TO single out and deal with those which
seem 10 us most essential.
l. Mr. Carey maintains that the authors Of popl-
lar and profitable books generally borrow all their
ideas Of any decided value from original thinkers
or discoverers TO whom the law accords 40 pro-
lection, and whose published works yield no profit
such as Bacon, Locke, Leibnitz, Des Cartes,
Franklin, Humboldt, Audubon, Davy Adam Smith,
Iararck. Lsplace, Condorcet, Cuvier, &c, &c.
These great thinkers write only for the few capa-
cous and cultivated minds, by part Of which they
are studied mastered. assimilated, transferred into
cheaper and popular works, which are adapted to
the general taste and apprehension and therefore are
widely read and of profit to the authors and
publishers Popular authorship (argues Mr.. c. is
ne-.ls the dressing up of ideas which have become
common property, in lucid pleasing attractive garb'
and gives the author no valid claim to ownership.
Now we answer to this that while the fact is par
49,
books it is clearly not so with respect 10 others For
instance-an intelligent person familiar with coempo-
rary poetry will say at on hearing ieS lines OF
a new poem read 1" That is Tennyson s --or Brown
ing s. or Bry ant OF Wbtiers Holmes as the case
may be-and he Will have judged Alright ninety-nine
tines in hundred If So is it not clear that even
popular authorship something quite other and higher
than Mr. Careys necessities compel him to pronounce
it,
But we Will meet him on his own ground. new
book, he says, is merely bouquet which some indi-
vidual has gathered and arranged from flower garden
which il common property. We will admit it, for the
arguments sake and see how the right OF authorship is
affected Let US suppose our Cty's proposed Central
Park we're completed and stocked with the choicest
owers-so abundant that every citizen at liberty
to pluck and carry off many as he wished. One of
them gathers a handful, arranges them in elegant
bouquet and is carrying them home TO his children
wien Nose or some other bully along and snatches
them from his hand. what do you mean - asks the
astonished bouquetmaker. II mean replies Nose,
that these flowers are common property and have
as good RI ht 10 them you have Who does not
see that this reply would be allacy uttered in pallia
ton of robbery that the bouquet maker if it were
safe to do so, would reply" No; you have as good
right as / to the flowers growing in the Park-help
Yourself TO them but these, which have gathered
and arranged are not common property but my prop
erty, and to wrest them from me is robbery If my
work is worthless why seek to avail yourself of it
If valuable, why not pay me for it And these ques
tons Nose could only answer with his fist.
IL But Mr. Carey, being himself an eminent and Ia
borous ii not welpaid author, cannot well deny to
the writer right of property in his book aud the
only practical question that remains open is What
" shall be the measure what the limitations of that
right ?" To this our answer is simple and easy Ii
make table cart or flour barrel, though out
of wood growing On the Public Domain, that product
is clearly his to be used preserved and Sold as to him
shall seem good if he write book, though its ma
erals be mainly such as belong in common to all men,
then that book is his, in the manner and to the
same extent as the cart or Ourbarrel he might have
made instead would have been To assert the oppo-
site of this is to deny any natural and essential right
of property and make mans claim to the fruits OF his
own exertions boon conferred by human legislation
and subject to be withdrawn at any moment
Now if it were wholly true that popular authors de-
rive their valuable ideas mainly from the great thinkers
whose works have but narrow and Improbable SALE
that fact would by means justify the withdrawal OF
copyright but rather the diffusion of its benefits. The
Law should then say to Dickens, Macauay Thackeray,
&c, not You have right, and Will cOncede you
"next to none " but Gentlemen your ideas mainly
borrowed from Plato, Bacon, Milton, SHAKESPEARE and
1.-THE great thinkers and observers of our own age,
"wbo have toed long in poverty and have received no
reward for their vast and important contributions TO
human knowledge We, therefore adudge that half
the proceeds Of your several copyrights be paid into
"a common fund.- wherefrOm your masters, Humboldt,
Culver, Arago Kant Agassz, &c, &C., and their
surviving children shall be comfortably subsisted"
Make the most you can of Mr. Carey's premises, and
they prove not that less money should be paid for
copyright but that some new Socialist rule of dstrbu
ton should be devised aud applied to the aggregate
product of authorship But this would not at all help
the adversaries of international Copyright
ILL., As TO the cav that Treaty is not the proper
mode of establishing International Copyright we could
readily agree TO it if it not for the notorious fact
that il is only resOrted to in order to defeat any recog
milton whatever Of such Copyright We would much
prefer that Congress should simply pass law recog-
nzing and providing for the legal enforcement Of every
authors natural right TO control the multiplication and
diffusion of copies of bis own work, than that the
Senate should raty any Treaty looking to that end
But in favor of doing justice at all events and,
if the best way is hedged up, We shall not object to
taking the secondbest.
". And now as to the absolute Right of the case.
Two-thirds of Mr.. Carey's pamphlet would be more
forcble if pointed against all copyright whatever but
that is not Mr. Carey's ground. He admits right
of property in author but would restrict it to the
country in which he lives ard few years from the
publication of his works respectively. Let US con-