Sir Thomas More.—­And yet you talked of the improvement of the age, and of the current literature as exceeding in worth that of any former time

Montesinos.—­The portion of it which shall reach to future times will justify me; for we have living minds who have done their duty to their own age and to posterity.

Sir Thomas More.—­Has the age in return done its duty to them?

Montesinos.—­They complain not of the age, but they complain of an anomalous injustice in the laws.  They complain that authors are deprived of a perpetual property in the produce of their own labours, when all other persons enjoy it as an indefeasible and acknowledged right.  And they ask upon what principle, with what equity, or under what pretence of public good they are subjected to this injurious enactment?  Is it because their labour is so light, the endowments which are required for it so common, the attainments so cheaply and easily acquired, and the present remuneration in all cases so adequate, so ample, and so certain?

The act whereby authors are deprived of that property in their own works which, upon every principle of reason, natural justice, and common law, they ought to enjoy, is so curiously injurious in its operation, that it bears with most hardship upon the best works.  For books of great immediate popularity have their run and come to a dead stop:  the hardship is upon those which win their way slowly and difficultly, but keep the field at last.  And it will not appear surprising that this should generally have been the case with books of the highest merit, if we consider what obstacles to the success of a work may be opposed by the circumstances and obscurity of the author, when he presents himself as a candidate for fame, by the humour or the fashion of the times; the taste of the public, more likely to be erroneous than right at any time; and the incompetence, or personal malevolence of some unprincipled critic, who may take upon himself to guide the public opinion, and who if he feels in his own heart that the fame of the man whom he hates is invulnerable, lays in wait for that reason the more vigilantly to wound him in his fortunes.  In such cases, when the copyright as by the existing law departs from the author’s family at his death, or at the end of twenty-eight years from the first publication of every work, (if he dies before the expiration of that term,) his representatives are deprived of their property just as it would begin to prove a valuable inheritance.

The last descendants of Milton died in poverty.  The descendants of Shakespeare are living in poverty, and in the lowest condition of life.  Is this just to these individuals?  Is it grateful to the memory of those who are the pride and boast of their country?  Is it honourable, or becoming to us as a nation, holding—­the better part of us assuredly, and the majority affecting to hold—­the names of Shakespeare and Milton in veneration?