The historian would say: "Mr. Senator, if you persist in this course, you
will never again see histories like mine. Here are hundreds of people
scattered over the country, industriously engaged in disinterring facts
relating to our early history. They are enthusiasts, and many of them are
very poor. Some of them contrive to publish, in the form of books, the
results of their researches, while others give them to the newspapers, or
to the historical societies, and thus they are enabled to come before the
world. Few people buy such things, and it not unfrequently happens that
men who have spent their lives in the collection of important facts, waste
much of their small means in giving them to an ungrateful nation.
Nevertheless, they have their reward in the consciousness that they are
thus enabling others to furnish the world with accurate histories of their
country. I find them of infinite use. They are my hewers of wood and
drawers of water, and they never look for payment for their labor. Deprive
me of their services, and I shall be obliged to abandon the production of
books, and return to the labors of my profession--and they will be
deprived of fame, while the public will be deprived of knowledge."

The medical writer would say: "Mr. Senator, should you succeed in carrying
out the idea with which you have commenced, you will, I fear, be the cause
of great injury to our profession, and probably of great loss of life, for
you will thereby arrest the dissemination of knowledge. We have, here and
abroad, thousands of industrious and thoughtful men, more intent upon
doing good than upon pecuniary profit, who give themselves to the study of
particular diseases, furnishing the results to our journals, and not
unfrequently publishing monographs of the highest value. The sale of these
is always small, and their publication not unfrequently makes heavy drafts
on the small means of their authors. Such men are of infinite use to me,
for it is by aid of their most valuable labors that I have found myself
enabled to prepare the numerous and popular works that I have given to the