authors above referred to.

Such being the facts, and, that they are facts cannot be denied, let us
now suppose a proposition to be made that, with a view to add one, two,
three, or four thousand dollars to the annual income of ex-presidents, and
ex-legislators, and half as much to that of the widows and children of
distinguished officers, there should be established a general pension
system, involving an expenditure of the public moneys, and consequent
taxation, to the extent of ten or fifteen millions a year, and then
inquire by whom it might be supported. Would any single one of the editors
who are now so earnest in their appeals for further grants of privilege
venture so to do? Would not the most earnest of them be among the first to
visit on such a proposition the most withering denunciations? Judging from
what, in the last two years, we have read in various editorial columns, we
should say that they would be so. Would, however, any member of either
house of Congress venture to commit himself before the world by offering
such a proposition? We doubt it very much. Nevertheless it is now coolly
proposed to establish a system that would not only tax the present
generation as many millions annually, but that would grow in amount at a
rate far exceeding the growth of population, doing this in the hope that
future essayists might be enabled to count their receipts by half instead
of quarter millions, and future novelists to collect abroad and at home
the hundreds of thousands that, as we are assured, are theirs of _right_,
and that are now denied them. When we shall have determined to grant to
the widows and children of the men who in the last half dozen years have
perished in the public service, some slight measure of justice, it may be
time to consider that question, but until then it should most certainly be
deferred.

The most active and earnest of all the advocates of literary _rights_