country, and the appalling consequences of refusing the concessions which the existing clamor demands. He told you, Sir, that the stormy tides of popular commotion were rising rapidly around us; that the Stygian waters were rapidly gaining upon us, and that it was time for us- - and barely time to endeavor to save ourselves from being swallowed up by the devouring waves. He told you that the deluge of public opinion was about to overwhelm you; and he invited you to embark with him on this frail and crazy raft, constructed in the blundering haste of terror, as the only means of escaping from destruction. No, Sir, no! trust not "that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark!” No, Sir! stand firm where you are, and wait until the threatening waters subside. What you hear is not only a fictitious, but a factitious clamor. Be you calm, steady and bold; and the People, under the influence of your wisdom and courage, will recover their wonted judgment, and become sensible of the value of what they would lose by this scheme, and of the uselessness of what they might gain. Of the Constitution of this country there might, perhaps, have been a better theoretical arrangement; but I do, in my heart, firmly believe that no human ingenuity could, a priori, have conceived so admirable a practical system, promoting, in such nice and just degrees, the wealth, happiness and liberties, of the community at large, "Where jarring interests, reconciled, create The according music of a well-mixed State; Where small and great, where weak and strong, are made To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade; 122. EXTENSION OF THE TERM OF COPYRIGHT, 1838.-T. N. Talfourd. THERE is something, Sir, peculiarly unjust in bounding the term of an author's property by his natural life, if he should survive so short a period as twenty-eight years. It denies to age and experience the probable reward it permits to youth to youth, sufficiently full of hope and joy to slight its promises. It gives a bounty to haste, and informs the laborious student, who would wear away his strength to complete some work which "the world will not willingly let die," that the more of his life he devotes to its perfection, the more limited shall be his interest in its fruits. When his works assume their place among the classics of his country, your law declares that those works shall become your property; and you requite him by seizing the patrimony of his children! In the words of Mr. Wordsworth's petition, "This bill has for its main object to relieve men of letters from the thraldom of being forced to court the living generation to aid them in rising above slavish taste and degraded prejudice, and to encourage them to rely on their own impulses." Surely this is an object worthy of the Legisla still, ture of a great People, especially in an age where restless activity and increasing knowledge present temptations to the slight and the superficial which do not exist in a ruder age. Let those who "to beguile the time look like the time" have their fair scope, let cheap and innocent publications be multiplied as much as you please, the character of the age demands something impressed with a nobler labor, and directed to a higher aim. "The immortal mind craves objects that endure." The printers need not fear. There will not be too many candidates for "a bright reversion," which only falls in when the ear shall be deaf to human praise. I have been accused of asking you to legislate "on some sort of sentimental feeling." I deny the charge. The living truth is with us. The spectral phantoms of depopulated printing-houses and shops are the baseless fancies of our opponents. If I were here beseeching indulgence for the frailties and excesses which sometimes attend fine talents, if I were here appealing to your sympathy in behalf of crushed hopes and irregular aspirations, the accusation would be just. I plead not for the erratic, but for the sage; not for the perishing, but for the eternal for him who, poet, philosopher or historian, girds himself for some toil lasting as life, lays aside all frivolous pursuits for one virtuous purpose, that, when encouraged by the distant hope of that "ALL-HAIL HEREAFTER" which shall welcome him among the heirs of fame, he may not shudder to think of it as sounding with hollow mockery in the ears of those whom he loves, and waking sullen echoes by the side of a cheerless hearth! For such I ask this boon, and through them for mankind; - and I ask it with the confidence, in the expression of which your veteran petitioner, Wordsworth, closed his appeal to you, "That in this, as in all other cases, justice is capable of working out its own expediency." 123. REALITY OF LITERARY PROPERTY, 1838. — Id. It is, indeed, time that literature should experience some of the blessings of legislation. If we should now simply repeal all the statutes which have been passed under the guise of encouraging learning, and leave it to be protected only by the principles of the common law, and the remedies which the common law would supply, I believe the relief would be welcome. It did not occur to our ancestors that the right of deriving solid benefits from that which springs solely from within us, the right of property in that which the mind itself creates, and which, so far from exhausting the materials common to all men, or limiting their resources, enriches and expands them, a right of property which, by the happy peculiarity of its nature, can only be enjoyed by the proprietor in proportion as it blesses mankind, should be exempted from the protection which is extended to the ancient appropriation of the soil, and the rewards of commercial enterprise. "But," say the opponents of this measure, we think that, from the moment an author puts his thoughts on paper, and delivers them to the world, his property therein wholly ceases." What! has he invested no capital? embarked no fortune? If human life is nothing in your commercial tables, - if the sacrifice of profession, of health, of gain, is nothing, surely the mere outlay of him who has perilled his fortune to instruct mankind may claim some regard! Or is the interest itself so refined, so ethereal, that you cannot regard it as property, because it is not palpable to sense as to feeling? Is there any justice in this? If so, why do you protect moral character as a man's most precious possession, and compensate the party who suffers unjustly in that character by damages? Has this possession any existence half so palpable as the author's right in the printed creation of his brain? I have always thought it one of the proudest triumphs of human law, that it is able to recognize and to guard this breath and finer spirit of moral action; that it can lend its aid in sheltering that invisible property, which exists solely in the admiration and affection of others; and, if it may do this, why may it not protect his interest in those living words, which, as was well observed by that great thinker, Mr. Hazlitt, are, "after all, the only things which last forever"? 124. AN INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.—Id. In venturing to invite the attention of the House to the state of the law affecting the property of men of letters in the results of their genius and labors, I would advert to one other consideration as connected with this subject. I would urge the expediency and justice of acknowledging the rights of foreigners to copyright in this country, and of claiming it from them for ourselves in return. The great minds of our time have an audience to impress far vaster than it entered into the minds of their predecessors to hope for; an audience increasing as population thickens in the cities of America, and spreads itself out through its diminishing wilds; an audience who speak our language, and who look on our old poets as their own immortal ancestry. - And if this, our literature, shall be theirs, - if its diffusion shall follow the efforts of the stout heart and sturdy arm, in their triumph over the obstacles of nature, if the woods, stretching beyond their confines, shall be haunted with visions of beauty which our poets have created, let those who thus are softening the ruggedness of young society have some present interest about which affection may gather; and, at least, let them be protected from those who would exhibit them, mangled or corrupted, to their transatlantic disciples. I do not, in truth, ask for literature favor; I do not ask for it charity. I do not even appeal to gratitude in its behalf. But I ask for it a portion, and but a portion, of that common justice which the coarsest industry obtains for its natural reward; justice, which nothing but the very extent of its claims, and the nobleness of the associations to which they are akin, have prevented it from receiving from our laws. 125. THE LEGISLATIVE UNION, 1834.- Sir Robert Peel. Born, 1788; died, 1850. I WANT no array of figures, I want no official documents, I want no speeches of six hours, to establish to my satisfaction the public policy of maintaining the Legislative Union. I feel and know that the repeal of it must lead to the dismemberment of this great empire, must make Great Britain a fourth-rate power of Europe, and Ireland a savage wilderness; and I will give, therefore, at once, and without hesitation, an emphatic negative to the motion for repeal. There are truths which lie too deep for argument, truths, to the establishment of which the evidence of the senses, or the feelings of the heart, have contributed more than the slow process of reasoning; which are graven in deeper characters than any that reason can either impress or efface. When Doctor Johnson was asked to refute the arguments for the non-existence of matter, he stamped his foot upon the ground, and exclaimed, "I refute them thus." When Mr. Canning heard the first whisper in this House of a repeal of the Union, this was all the answer he vouchsafed, the eloquent and indignant answer, the tones of which are still familiar to my ear, Repeal the Union? Restore the Heptarchy!" Thirty-three years have now elapsed since the passing of the act of Union; a short period, if you count by the lapse of time; but it is a period into which the events of centuries have been crowded. It includes the commencement and the close of the most tremendous conflict which ever desolated the world. Notwithstanding the then recent convulsions in Ireland, - notwithstanding the dissatisfaction expressed with the Union, the United Empire, that had been incorporated only three years before the commencement of the war, escaped the calamities to which other Nations were exposed. In our gallant armies no distinction of Englishmen and Irishmen was known; none of the vile jealousies, which this motion, if successful, would generate, impaired the energies which were exerted by all in defence of a common country. That country did not bestow its rewards with a partial hand. It did not, because they were Irishmen, pay a less sincere or less willing homage to the glorious memory of a Ponsonby and a Pakenham. Castlereagh and Canning fought in the same ranks with Pitt; and Grattan took his place, in the great contests of party, by the side of Fox. The majestic oak of the forest was transplanted, but it shot its roots deep in a richer and more congenial soil. Above all, to an Irishto that Arthur Wellesley, who, in the emphatic words of the learned gentleman (Mr. Sheil), "eclipsed his military victories by the splendor of his civil triumphs"-to him was committed, with the man ― unanimous assent and confidence of a generous country, the great and glorious task of effecting the deliverance of the world. Who is that Irishman, who, recollecting these things, has the spirit and the heart to propose that Ireland shall be defrauded for the future of her share of such high achievements; that to her the wide avenues to civil and military glory shall be hereafter closed; that the faculties and energies of her sons shall be forever stunted by being cramped within the paltry limits of a small island? Surely, Sir, we owe it to the memory of the illustrious brave, who died in defending this great Empire from dismemberment by the force and genius of Napoleon, at least to save it from dismemberment by the ignoble enemies that now assail it! 126. AMERICAN MERCHANT VESSELS, 1850. -Richard Cobden. I SOMETIMES quote the United States of America; and, I think, in this matter of national defence, they set us a very good example. Does anybody dare to attack that Nation? There is not a more formidable Power, in every sense of the word, - although you may talk of France and Russia, than the United States of America; and there is not a statesman with a head on his shoulders who does not know it; and yet the policy of the United States has been to keep a very small amount of armed force in existence. At the present moment, they have not a line-of-battle ship afloat, notwithstanding the vast extension of their commercial marine. Last year she recalled the last ship-of-war from the Pacific; and I shall be very much astonished if you see another. The People are well employed, and her taxation is light, which countries cannot have if they burden themselves with the expense of these enormous armaments. Now, many persons appeal to the English Nation under the impression that they are a very pugnacious People. I am not quite sure that we are not. I am not quite sure that my opponents do not sometimes have the advantage over me in appealing to the ready-primed pugnacity of our fellow-countrymen. I believe I am pugnacious myself; but what I want is, to persuade my countrymen to preserve their pugnaciousness until somebody comes to attack them. Be assured, if you want to be prepared for future war, you will be better prepared in the way that the United States is prepared, by the enormous number of merchant ships of large tonnage constantly building; in the vast number of steamers turning out of the building-yards at New York, those enormous steamers, finer than any to be found in the royal navies of any country on the continent of Europe, commonly extending from fifteen hundred to sixteen hundred tons. If the spirit of America were once aroused, and her resentment excited, her mercantile marine alone, - the growth of commerce, the result of a low taxation, and a prosperous People, - her mercantile marine alone would be more than a match for any war navy that exists on the continent of Europe. |