clamour for copyright: and it had, no doubt, a powerful ally and exemplar in the existing patent law. The patent law, nevertheless, was limited to the purely mechanical concern of manufacture; you could not patent Euclid or St. John.

Still, the new race of authors desired a patent. But commercialism in art is a monster-a chimera whose wailings of emptiness were long in making themselves heard in the grand inquest of the realm. It was not until 1709 that it obtained a fourteen-year power of obstruction. Earlier authors had been content with small gains-they knew that "the price of their work was immortality and that posterity would pay it." And when, in 1774, a perpetuity in copyright was claimed, Lord Camden carried the Lords with him in the noble speech in which the passage occurs: "This perpetuity now contended for is as odious and as selfish as any other; it deserves as much reprobation, and will become as intolerable. Knowledge and science are not things to be bound in such cobweb chains; when once the bird's out of the cage, volat irrevocabile: Ireland, Scotland, America, will afford her shelter."1 Mr. Scrutton, in an unnecessary gibe at Camden, suggests that "if applied to the remuneration of my Lord Camden's own intellectual labour, his lordship might have considered immortality an unrealisable commodity for the wants of daily life." Camden's reputation as a statesman and a patriot is above cheap detraction of that sort.

Sugden (Lord St. Leonards), who was as considerable an author as Lord Camden, and whose works probably paid him much better, declared himself entirely against

1 It is interesting to notice that two dukes were for and two against Camden, eleven earls for and two against, three viscounts to two, three barons to two, and the Bishops of S. Asaph, Lichfield and Coventry (? Carlisle, who spoke in that sense) to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Chester. Lord Rockingham voted in the minority. The Court of Session came to a similar decision in Scotland by ten to one.

copyright. Speaking on Talfourd's bill, he declared his intention of opposing it at every stage.

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'He was one of

those who thought that there was no Common-law copyright in the author beyond the manuscript when it was written, or while it remained in his own possession. He had come to this determination after much consideration, and he thought that the case was clearly distinguishable from a patent right. He would oppose the bill as long as he could, because he believed that it ought not to be passed." Lord John (Earl) Russell felt apprehensive that when the expectations of authors and publishers were satisfied there would be "no small neglect of the interests of the public." Royalists might have bought up Milton's copyrights and suppressed his voice. Sir Alexander Boswell might have suppressed the Life of Johnson for the credit of the family. It is not without interest to note that the strongest opposition was offered to the present Act by Dr. Wakley, M.P., the founder and editor of the Lancet, of whom it has been observed by E. Irving Carlyle that "time has proved his contentions in every instance of importance to be just."

The new monopoly had its origin in religious prejudice. One Bell, in 1646, "at great cost and pains," discovered a MS. of Luther's Table Talk, and the House of Commons presented him with the sole right of printing it for fourteen. years," and that none should print the same unless licensed by him." Obviously this was a Puritan honorarium to Bell, awarded on religious considerations, as an inexpensive prize for good conduct.

The whole argument in its favour, as a general principle, appears to be based on that most fruitful source of errora misleading and absurdly sentimental analogy. Once style a composition" property," and the whole train of ideas

1 43 Hansard, 555

2

Journ. H. of C., 24 Febr. 1646, cited Paterson, Liberty of the Press and Speech, p. 243 n.

involved in property law follows. Copying is "theft"; innocent infringement is visited with the consequences of conversion; a man thinks at his peril. A composition is utterly unlike a physical thing, and those simple rights over physical things which are termed property. Absolute exclusive ownership of a physical thing is a conception which it is easy to enforce by law. It is quite clear what the thing is, and what is its history. It is a matter capable of proof by simple evidence, whether Jones made it or Brown. But an idea may occur to a dozen different people. Is the world to be deprived of it for fifty-seven years because Brown thought of it first? You may not take Brown's chair, because he cannot conveniently share it with you. Two people cannot use the same houseful of furniture, except under peculiar conditions. But any quantity of people can share and utilise the same idea, and to prevent them from doing so is simply to stifle development. There is one hideous vice-garbling-against which an author has every right to be protected, as against every libel. More he cannot require.

Except in the case of the reproduction of the ipsissima verba of a book, there is a further breakdown in the analogy with property. It is impossible to do more than guess that the supposed infringement is not the independent and original discovery of the second author. And if it be his independent and original thought, on what principle of justice can he be penalized for publishing it to the worldon the footing, forsooth, that he is "stealing" it from someone who has entered it at Stationers' Hall? If it is indeed the latter's "property," you must pay for the use of it, whether you knew it to be his property or not. For example, if Amasis was an infringement of A Son of the Sun, it was equally an infringement whether the author of the former had read the latter or not. Every one who brought out an Egyptian play on the usual lines of Egyptian plays, must,

on this showing, have been running a grave risk, and we advise Mr. Brieux and Sir H. Tree to be careful. But every one can see that it was really because the authors of Amasis had had A Son of the Sun before them, that they were held liable, and that their actual misdeed was not the infringement of copyright, but the supposed annexation of an idea.

This consideration only applies to the alarming and illegitimate extensions of the principle of copyright to cover the appropriation of "stage thunder." In its least objectionable form, the prevention of the exact reproduction of literary or artistic matter as published, copyright nevertheless, remains open to the charge of stifling the development of culture. An artist is perfectly at liberty to keep his creations to himself. But when he gives them to the world, he cannot behave as if they remained his own. They have become part of the common stock of thought, and an attempt to embarrass the free use of them can only produce friction and explosion.

He is only the channel through which they come. The impulse to spread their benefits, an act which does not in itself do him the slightest harm, is and must be the paramount duty of those who become acquainted with them. They are the natural heritage of the distraught world; to make money of them is blackmail. To sell or exhibit them for money is not blamable, though it may not be magnificent: il faut vivre. But to expect to control their reproduction, sale or exhibition, for a long series of years, is simply to claim to put fetters on human development.

The author might have refrained from making his message known. Morally, we may blame him or not, as we feel inclined. Legally, we cannot touch him. But he is not at liberty to make it known and then to control its working in the world. When he has given it out, it has passed from his hands. It has, to employ the jargon of sciolists, ceased to be his "property." It is the "property"

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of humanity, and he cannot control its destinies further. He has led them to the knowledge of their own, and they cannot in the long run be fettered in the use and enjoyment of it. He may charge a pilotage fee, but he cannot fairly assume to license pilots.

A new idea is like a new continent. The first discoverer, and any parliamentary Pope Alexander who favours him, can only appropriate so much of it as he can occupy. He cannot exclude the rest of the world and force them to pay tribute to him. Land and goods are limited, and the maximum of convenience is subserved by the concession of a share to individuals, to be utilised as their own particular sphere. But no necessity dictates the reservation and the fencing round of private preserves in the domain of thought. The realms of gold are ampler than the kingdoms of clay. There is room for all in those astral regions.

Writers of eminence have claimed and conceded as much. Swift never cared about his copyrights.1 Macaulay and Grote opposed Talfourd's Act. When some captious critic told Molière that parts of his plays were "lifted" from another author-" C'est mon bien," declared the great dramatist, "je le prends là ou je le trouve." It would be impossible to put more neatly the cardinal truth that literary compositions are the "property," not of the author, but of those who can use them. In the same spirit Poe observes lightly of a plagiarist,-"the little man is quite welcome to take away on his back as much as he can carry." It is surprising that Carlyle did not agree with them. One of the foremost supporters of Talfourd's Bill, and a petitioner in propria persona in favour of it, he could nevertheless write loftily of "peddling away one's poor gift in Review articles for a discerning public that has sixpence to spare!"

Händel, at any rate, picked up his property where he met 1 Paterson, u.s. 244 n.