If the sales of books were as great in England as they are here, English authors would be abundantly paid.  In reply it will be said their works are cheap here because we pay no copyright.  For payment of the authors, however, a very small sum would be required, if the whole people of England could afford, as they should be able to do, to purchase books.  A contribution of a shilling per head would give, as has been shown, a sum of almost eight millions of dollars, sufficient to pay to fifteen hundred salaries nearly equal to those of our Secretaries of State.  Centralization, however, destroys the market for books, and the sale is, therefore, small; and the few successful writers owe their fortunes to the collection of large contributions made among a small number of readers; 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 engaged in cultivating science—­fame.  This, it will be said, is an unsubstantial return; yet Byron deemed it quite sufficient when he first saw an American edition of his works, coming, as it seemed to him, “from posterity.”  Miss Bremer found no small reward for her labors in knowing the high