ready to unite with them in recognizing the "rights" now claimed. So, too,
it may be well believed, would it be with China, Japan, Bokhara, and the
Sandwich Islands. Of what use, however, would be such an union? Would it
increase the facilities for transplanting the ideas of American authors?
Are not the obstacles to such transplantation already sufficiently great,
and is it desirable that they should be at all increased? Germany has
already tried the experiment, but whether or not, when the time shall
come, the existing treaties will be renewed, is very doubtful. Where she
now pays dollars, she probably receives cents. Discussion of the question
there has led to the translation and republication of the letters here now
republished, and the views therein expressed have received the public
approbation of men whose opinions are entitled to the highest
consideration. What has recently been done in that country in reference to
domestic copyright, and what has been the effect, are well exhibited in an
article from an English journal just now received, a part of which,
American moneys having been substituted for German ones, is here given, as
follows:

"We have so long enjoyed the advantage of unrestricted competition in the
production of the works of the best English writers of the past, that we
can hardly realize what our position would have been had the right to
produce Shakespeare, or Milton, or Goldsmith, or any of our great classic
writers, been monopolized by any one publishing-house,--certainly we
should never have seen a shilling Shakespeare, or a half-crown Milton;
and Shakespeare, instead of being, as he is,' familiar in our mouths as
household words,' would have been known but to the scholar and the
student. We are far from condemning an enlightened system of copyright,
and have not a word to say in favor of unreasoning competition; but we do
think that publishers and authors often lose sight of their own interest
in adhering to a system of high prices and restricted sale. Tennyson's