the earth revolved around the sun; but he had therein, from the moment of its publication, no more property than had the most violent of his opponents., The discovery of other laws occupied the life of Kepler, but he had no property in them.  Newton spent many years of his life in the composition of his “Principia,” yet in that he had no copyright, except for the mere clothing in which his ideas were placed before the world.  The body was common property.  So, too, with Bacon and Locke, Leibnitz and Descartes, Franklin, Priestley, and Davy, Quesnay, Turgot, and Adam Smith, Lamarck and Cuvier, and all other men who have aided in carrying science to the point at which it has now arrived.  They have had no property in their ideas.  If they labored, it was because they had a thirst for knowledge.  They could expect no pecuniary reward, nor had they much reason even to hope for fame.  New ideas were, necessarily, a subject of controversy; and cases are, even in our time, not uncommon, in which the announcement of an idea at variance with those commonly recorded has tended greatly to the diminution of the enjoyment of life by the man by whom it has been announced.  The contemporaries of Harvey could scarcely be made to believe in the circulation of the blood.  Mr. Owen might have lived happily in the enjoyment of a large fortune had he not conceived new views of society.  These he gave to the world in the form of a book, that led him into controversy which has almost lasted out his life, while the effort to carry his ideas into effect has cost him his fortune.  Admit that he had been right, and that the correctness of his views were now fully established, he would have in them no property whatever; nor would his books be now yielding him a shilling, because later writers would be placing them before the world in other and more attractive clothing.  So is it with the books of all the men I have named.  The copyright of the “Principia” would be worth nothing, as would be the case with all that Franklin wrote on electricity, or Davy on chemistry.  Few now read Adam Smith, and still fewer Bacon, Leibnitz, or Descartes.  Examine where we may, we shall find that the collectors of the facts and the producers of the ideas which constitute the body of books, have received little or no reward while thus engaged in contributing so largely to the augmentation of the common property of mankind.

For what, then, is copyright given?  For the clothing in which the body is produced to the world.  Examine Mr. Macaulay’s “History of England” and you will find that the body is composed of what is common property.  Not only have the facts been recorded by others, but the ideas, too, are derived from the works of men who have labored for the world without receiving, and frequently without the expectation of receiving, any pecuniary compensation for their labors.  Mr. Macaulay has read much and carefully, and he has thus been enabled to acquire great skill in arranging and clothing his facts; but the reader