y with a number of men of business in a series of cotton
speculations, and in others connected with Western lands. In both cases
the ventures were unprofitable, and the desire of retrieving his losses
was one of the causes that led to this constant literary production.
There were other circumstances, too, besides his mere unpopularity that
had tended to reduce the amount gained from what he wrote. After 1838,
the income received from England naturally fell off, in consequence of
the change in the law of copyright. The act of Parliament passed in that
year provided that no foreign author outside of British dominions should
have copyright in those dominions unless the country to which he
belonged gave copyright to the English author. No fault can be found
with this legislation on the score of justice. The value of anything
produced by a citizen of the United States fell at once as a necessary
consequence of the want of protection against piracy. The British
publisher, not from any motive of mere personal gain, but from an
unselfish desire by retaliatory proceedings to bring about a better
state of things, went speedily to work to plunder the American author
who favored international copyright in order to show his disgust at the
conduct of the American publisher who opposed it. As a matter of fact
Cooper's novels were from that time published in Great Britain, in cheap
form, and sold at a cheap price. Such reprints could not but lower the
amount which could be offered for his work. Newspaper reports, the (p. 262)
correctness of which can neither be affirmed nor denied, frequently
mention that for the copyright of each of his earlier novels he was in
the habit of receiving a thousand guineas. We know positively that for
his later tales, as fast as they were written, Bentley, his London
publisher, usually paid him three hundred pounds each.

In America circumstances of another kind contributed to reduce the
profits from his works. Most of them were published at a price that
would have required an immense sale to make them remunerative at all. It
was about 1840 that two weekly newspapers in New York, "The New World,"
and "The Brother Jonathan," had begun the practice of reprinting in
their columns the writings of the most popular novelists which were then
coming out in England. As soon as these were finished they were brought
out in parts and sold at a small price. This piracy was so successful
that imitators sprang up everywh