to lack such faculties themselves, or to doubt
their existence in the people. The copyright measure, however, may be
safely left to the national sense of expediency. America is beginning
to feel the value of literary eminence, and must be pardoned, on this
account, for absurdly overrating at times the little that she already
possesses. You will be surprised to see in how many ways her
literature suffers by her present laws, and how safely avenging
justice may be trusted to repair its own injuries. Let me show you.

The political theorist would say beforehand, that under the proposed
copyright law the people would be deprived of cheap books; and this is
one of the popular delusions that experience must dispel. The present
laws do indeed make books very cheap, if cheapness is to be estimated
only by the cost per copy, and if legibility, convenience, durability,
and honesty are to go for nothing: and if the _price which a whole
nation pays for such books in many serious losses_, is also to be
excluded from the calculation. The present laws encourage the rapid
manufacture of such books as will sell rapidly. Novels and light
reading of all kinds are thus multiplied, to the exclusion of more
valuable books, which sell slowly; and in consequence, an entire
nation becomes infected with the depraved appetite of mawkish
school-girls. But these novels must be printed at the lowest rate; for
being unprotected, some one will bring them out as cheaply as
possible, and he who does so command the market. Thus book-making
becomes a mean and debased art; and books are crowded upon the public,
at prices merely nominal; having much the appearance, and sharing the
fate, of newspapers, which perish in the using. At the same time,
these worthless books affect the prices of all books. Valuable works
required for libraries must be printed with the least possible
investment of capital, or not printed at all. If any one undertakes
such publications, he must stint the editor, shave the papermaker,
grind the printer, starve the stitchers, and make the binder slight
his work. This is the kind of "living" which the report of Congress
says is furnished to _thousands of persons_ by the republishing of
English works; and such it must be, where every publisher has to make
books _to sell_. The books thus published are dear at any price; and
the best works do not get before the public at all. No choice American
editions can be found of Burke, of Gibbon, o