absurdity to ask an enlargement of their monopoly; but, as they are not
thus paid, it is asked. There is probably but a single literary man in
England that receives $8,000 a year for his labors, and it may be doubted
if it would be possible to name ten whose annual receipts equal $6,000;
while those of a vast majority of them are under $1,500, and very many of
them greatly under it. Even were we to increase the number of authors to
fifteen hundred, one to every 4,000 males between the ages of 20 and 60 in
the kingdom, and to allow them, on an average, $2,000 per annum, it would
require but three millions of dollars to pay them, and that could be done
by an average contribution of five pence per head of the population, a
wonderfully small amount to be paid for literary labor by a nation
claiming to be the wealthiest in the world. A shilling a head would give
to the whole fifteen hundred salaries nearly equal to those of our
Secretaries; and yet we see clever and industrious men, writers of
eminence whose readers are to be found in every part of the civilized
world, living on in hopeless poverty, and dying with the knowledge that
they are leaving widows and children to the "tender mercies" of a world in
which they themselves have shone and starved. Viewing all these facts, it
may, I think, well be doubted if the annual contributions of the people
subject to the British copyright act for the support of the persons who
produce their books, much exceeds three pence, or six cents, per head; and
here it is that we are to find the real difficulty--one not to be
removed by us. The home market is the important one, whether for words or
things, and when that is bad but little benefit can be derived from any
foreign one; and every effort to extend the latter will, under such
circumstances, be found to result in disappointment. It can act only as a
plaster to conceal the sore, while the sore itself becomes larger and more
dangerous from day to day. To effect a cure, the sore itself must be
examined and its cause removed. To cure the disease so prevalent among
British authors we must first seek for the causes why the home market for