, with a whole navy of American corsairs in chase of your
literary cargo--the question takes this shape:--How does the American
law of copyright affect you as a British author, and what can be done
to save "Napper Tandy"? To answer you properly, let me first expound
the law itself, which, for your special benefit, I have taken pains to
examine.

You are doubtless aware that the constitution of this republic is one
which answers the great test proposed by Tom Paine, who imagined it to
be of the essence of a free constitution that it should be capable of
being _put into the pocket_! That splendid capability was never more
fully realised by the laws of a sixpenny club, than by the great
charter of American liberties. It is a thing written on paper, and may
be thrust into the breeches, or hung up on the wall, as best suits the
notions of its worshipper, and his manner of exhibiting respect. Now
the law of copyright is not here, as you suppose, a mere matter of
statute; nor is the doctrine that an author has no perpetual property
in what his intellect creates, a simple decision of courts. It is a
part of the constitution, which empowers the national Congress "to
promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing _for
limited times_, to authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries." An American writer has remarked,
that its equivalent would have been the concession of a power to
_promote_ the fisheries, by allowing to fishermen a _limited number_
of the cod-fish and herrings which they take on a Newfoundland
fog-bank. Here then, you will say, is a fundamental obstruction to
literary justice in America! But your hasty conclusion will show that
you have thought but little on written constitutions. I agree with the
Count de Maistre, that such instruments are of all things the most
slippery. What is easier than for Congress to evade its restriction,
and make the _limited time_ exactly the years of Methusaleh! Such a
limit would be about as good as "to one's heirs for ever." But there
is yet another facility in written constitutions: "a breath unmakes
them, as a breath has made." In America, a constitution is as easily
overhauled, new-ribbed, and launched again, as ever a sloop-of-war was
dry-docked and new-coppered. Here, for instance, is the great "Empire
State" of New York, with a constitution hardly a year old! The
stripling who has just attained his majority, has actually s