ideas, and are largely paid for so doing. The most active advocate of
international copyright is Mr. Dickens, who is said to realize $70,000 per
annum from the sale of works whose composition is little more than
amusement for his leisure hours. In this country, the only attempt that
has yet been made to restrict the right of translation is in a suit now
before the courts, for compensation for the privilege of converting into
German a work that has yielded the largest compensation that the world has
yet known for the same quantity of literary labor.

We are constantly told that regard to the interests of science requires
that we should protect and enlarge the rights of authors; but does science
make any such claim for herself? I doubt it. Men who make additions to
science know well that they have, and can have, no rights whatever. Cuvier
died very poor, and all the copyright that could have been given to him or
Humboldt would not have enriched either the one or the other. Laplace knew
well that his great work could yield him nothing. Our own Bowditch
translated it as a labor of love, and left by his will the means required
for its publication. The gentlemen who advocate the interests of science
are literary men who use the facts and ideas furnished by scientific men,
paying nothing for their use. Now, literature is a most honorable
profession, and the gentlemen engaged in it are entitled not only to the
respect and consideration of their fellow-men, but also to the protection
of the law; but in granting it, the legislator is bound to recollect, that
justice to the men who furnish the raw materials of books, and justice to
the community that owns those raw materials, require that protection shall
not, either in point of space or time, be greater than is required for
giving the producer of books a full and fair compensation for his labor.
How the present system operates in regard to English and American authors,
I propose to consider in another letter.