The French and English copyright treaty has, as I understand, caused great deterioration in the value of property that had been accumulated in France under the system that had before existed, and such may prove to be the case with the one now under consideration.  Should it be so, the deterioration would prove to be fifty times greater in amount than it was in France.  Will it do so?  No one knows, because those whose interests are to be affected by the law are not permitted to read the law that is to be made.  They know well that they have not been consulted, and equally well do they know that the negotiator is not familiar with the trade that is to be regulated, and is liable, therefore, to have given his assent to provisions that will work injury never contemplated by him at the time the treaty had been made.  Again, provisions may have been inserted, with a view to prevent injury to the publishers, or to the public, that would be found in practice to be utterly futile, or even to augment the difficulty instead of remedying it.  That such result would follow the adoption of some of those whose insertion has been urged, I can positively assert.  In this state of things, it would seem to be proper that we should know whether the provisions of the treaty were submitted to the examination of any of the parties interested for or against it, and if so, to whom.  So far as I can learn, none of those opposed to it have had any opportunity afforded them of reading the law, and if any advice has been taken, it must have been of those publishers who are in favor of it.  Those gentlemen, however, are precisely the persons likely most to profit by the adoption of the principle recognized by the treaty; and the more disadvantageous to others the provisions for carrying that principle into effect, the greater must be the advantage to themselves.  They, therefore, can be regarded as little more than the exponents of the wishes of their English friends, who were counselling the British Minister on the one hand, while on the other they were, through their friends here, counselling the American one.  A treaty negotiated under such circumstances, would seem little likely to provide for the general interests of the American people.

When, in 1837, the attempt was first made to secure for English authors the privilege of copyright, a large number of them united in an agreement declaring a certain New York house to be “the sole authorized publishers and issuers” of their works.  Now, had that house volunteered its advice to the Secretary of State of that day, he would scarcely have regarded it as sufficiently disinterested to be qualified for the office it had undertaken; and yet, if any advice in the present case has been asked, it would seem that it must have been from houses that now look forward to filling the place then occupied by that single one, and that cannot, therefore, be regarded as fitted for the office of counsellors to the Secretary of the present day.  Recollect, I am, as is everybody