while the mass of authors live on, as did poor Tom Hood, from day to day,
with scarcely a hope of improvement in their condition.

Sixty years since, Great Britain was a wealthy country, abounding in
libraries and universities, and giving to the world some of the best, and
best paid, writers of the age. At that time the people of this country
were but four millions, and they were poor, while unprovided with either
books or libraries. Since then they have grown to twenty-six millions,
millions of whom have been emigrants, in general arriving here with
nothing but the clothing on their backs. These poor men have had every
thing to create for themselves--farms, roads, houses, libraries,
schools, and colleges; and yet, poor as they have been, they furnish now a
demand for the principal products of English mind greater than is found at
home. If we can make such a market, why cannot they? If they had such a
market, would it not pay their authors to the full extent of their merits?
Unquestionably it would; and if they see fit to pursue a system tending to
cheapen the services of the laborer in the field, in the workshop, and at
the desk, there is no more reason for calling upon the people of this
country to make up their deficiencies towards those who contribute to
their pleasure or instruction by writing books, than there would be in
asking us to aid in supporting the hundreds of thousands of day laborers,
their wives and children, whom the same system condemns, unpitied, to the
workhouse.

But, it will be asked, is it right that we should read the works of
Macaulay, Dickens, and others, without compensation to the authors? In
answer, it may be said, that we give them precisely what their own
countrymen have given to their Dalton, Davy, Wollaston, Franklin, Parry,
and the thousands of others who have furnished the bodies of which books
are composed--and more than we ourselves give to the men among us