What is claimed by English authors is perpetuity and universality of
property in the clothing they supply for the body that is furnished to the
world by other and unpaid men; and an examination of the course of
proceeding in that country for the last century and a half shows that each
step that has been taken has been in that direction. While denying to the
producers of facts and ideas any right whatsoever, every act of
legislation has tended to give more and more control over their
dissemination to men who appropriated them to their own use, and brought
them in an attractive form before the reader. Early in the last century
was passed an act well known as the Statute of Queen Anne, giving to
authors fourteen years as the period during which they were to have a
monopoly of the peculiar form of words they chose to adopt in coming
before the world. The number of persons then living in England and Wales,
and subjected to that monopoly, was about five millions. Since that time
the field of its operation has been enlarged, until it now embraces not
only England and Wales, but Scotland, Ireland, and the British colonies,
containing probably thirty-two millions of people who use the English
language. The time, too, has been gradually extended until it now reaches
forty-two years, or thrice the period for which it was originally granted.
Nevertheless, no life is more precarious than that of an Englishman
dependent upon literary pursuits for support. Such men are almost
universally poor, and leading men among them, Tennyson and Sir Francis
Head for instance, gladly accept the public charity, in the form of
pensions for less than five hundred dollars a year. This is not a
consequence of limitation in the field of action, for that is six times
greater than it was when Gay netted £1,600 from a single opera, and Pope
received £6,000 for his "Homer;" five times greater than when Fielding had
£1,000 for his "Amelia;" and four times more than when Robertson had
£4,500 for his "Charles V.," Gibbon £5,000 for the second part of his