twentieth of the total quantity of new ones annually printed. Admit,
however, that the total were but ten times greater, and that the
differences were but one fourth as great, it would be required that this
sum of $1,950,000 should be multiplied two and a half times, and that
would give about five millions of dollars; which, added to the sum already
obtained, would make seven millions _per annum_; and yet we have arrived
only at the commencement of the operation. All these books would require
to be reprinted in the next year, and the next, and so on, and for the
long period of forty-two years the payment on old books would require to
be added to those on new ones, until the sum would become a very startling
one. To enable us to ascertain what it must become, let us see what it
would now be had this system existed in the past. Every one of Scott's
novels would still be copyright, and such would be the case with Byron's
poems, and with all other books that have been printed in the last
forty-two years, of which the annual sale now amounts to many millions of
volumes. To the present price of these let us add the charge of the
author, and the monopoly charges of the English and American publishers,
and it will be found quite easy to obtain a further sum of five millions,
which, added to that already obtained, would make twelve millions _per
annum_, or enough to give to one in every four thousand males in the
United Kingdom, between the ages of twenty and sixty, a salary far
exceeding that of our Secretaries of State. Let this treaty be confirmed,
and let the consumption of foreign works continue at its present rate, and
payment of this sum must be made. We can escape its payment only on
condition of foregoing consumption of the books.

The real cause of difficulty is not to be found in "the few cents"
required for the author, but in the means required to be adopted for their
collection. Everybody that reads "Bleak House," or "Oliver Twist," would
gladly pay their author some cents, however unwilling he might be to pay