It Is Probable That The First
American Publisher Will Have Made Some Payment To The English Author
For The Privilege
Of publishing the book honestly, of publishing it
without recurrence to piracy; and in arranging his price with his
customers
He will be of course obliged to debit the book with the
amount so paid. If the author receive ten cents a copy on every
copy sold, the publisher must add that ten cents to the price he
charges. But he cannot do this with security, because the book can
be immediately reprinted and sold without any such addition to the
price. The only security which the American publisher has against
the injury which may be so done to him is the power of doing other
injury in return. The men who stand high in the trade, and who are
powerful because of the largeness of their dealings, can, in a
certain measure, secure themselves in this way. Such a firm would
have the power of crushing a small tradesman who should interfere
with him. But if the large firm commits any such act of injustice,
the little men in the trade have no power of setting themselves
right by counter-injustice. I need hardly point out what must be
the effect of such a state of things upon the whole publishing
trade; nor need I say more to prove that some law which shall
regulate property in foreign copyrights would be as expedient with
reference to America as it would be just toward England. But the
wrong done by America to herself does not rest here. It is true
that more English books are read in the States than American books
in England, but it is equally true that the literature of America is
daily gaining readers among us. That injury to which English
authors are subjected from the want of protection in the States,
American authors suffer from the want of protection here. One can
hardly believe that the legislators of the States would willingly
place the brightest of their own fellow-countrymen in this position,
because, in the event of a copyright bill being passed, the balance
of advantage would seem to accrue to England.
Of the literature of the United States, speaking of literature in
its ordinary sense, I do not know that I need say much more. I
regard the literature of a country as its highest produce, believing
it to be more powerful in its general effect, and more beneficial in
its results, than either statesmanship, professional ability,
religious teaching, or commerce. And in no part of its national
career have the United States been so successful as in this. I need
hardly explain that I should commit a monstrous injustice were I to
make a comparison in this matter between England and America.
Literature is the child of leisure and wealth. It is the produce of
minds which by a happy combination of circumstances have been
enabled to dispense with the ordinary cares of the world. It can
hardly be expected to come from a young country, or from a new and
still struggling people. Looking around at our own magnificent
colonies, I hardly remember a considerable name which they have
produced, except that of my excellent old friend Sam Slick.
Nothing, therefore, I think, shows the settled greatness of the
people of the States more significantly than their firm
establishment of a national literature. This literature runs over
all subjects: American authors have excelled in poetry, in science,
in history, in metaphysics, in law, in theology, and in fiction.
They have attempted all, and failed in none. What Englishman has
devoted a room to books, and devoted no portion of that room to the
productions of America?
But I must say a word of literature in which I shall not speak of it
in its ordinary sense, and shall yet speak of it in that sense which
of all, perhaps, in the present day should be considered the most
ordinary; I mean the every-day periodical literature of the press.
Most of those who can read, it is to be hoped, read books; but all
who can read do read newspapers. Newspapers in this country are so
general that men cannot well live without them; but to men and to
women also in the United States they may be said to be the one chief
necessary of life; and yet in the whole length and breadth of the
United States there is not published a single newspaper which seems
to me to be worthy of praise.
A really good newspaper - one excellent at all points - would indeed
be a triumph of honesty and of art. Not only is such a publication
much to be desired in America, but it is still to be desired in
Great Britain also. I used, in my younger days, to think of such a
newspaper as a possible publication, and in a certain degree to look
for it; now I expect it only in my dreams. It should be powerful
without tyranny, popular without triumph, political without party
passion, critical without personal feeling, right in its statements
and just in its judgments, but right and just without pride; it
should be all but omniscient, but not conscious of its omnipotence;
it should be moral, but never strait-laced; it should be well
assured but yet modest; though never humble, it should be free from
boastings. Above all these things it should be readable, and above
that again it should be true. I used to think that such a newspaper
might be produced, but I now sadly acknowledge to myself the fact
that humanity is not capable of any work so divine.
The newspapers of the States generally may not only be said to have
reached none of the virtues here named, but to have fallen into all
the opposite vices. In the first place, they are never true. In
requiring truth from a newspaper the public should not be anxious to
strain at gnats.
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