I was supposing that I had said, yesterday, all that I wanted to say about copyright, but I was probably mistaken. This morning’s mail brings a printed circular from ThorvaldⒶtextual note Solberg, Register of CopyrightsⒺexplanatory note, Washington, conveying notice of the fact that the Senate and House Committees on Patents will resume hearings upon the pending Copyright Bill on December 7th and 8thⒺexplanatory note, and that the two Committees will sit conjointly in the Senate Reading Room at the Library of Congress. Mr. Solberg requests that those persons desiring to be heard will as soon as possible notify his office, stating the amount of time they will require and the particular provisions of the bill upon which they will desire to speak.

This softly, sweetly, gently, wafts me back, as upon perfumed zephyrs, to the dim and dreamy and devilish past. Reminiscences connected with copyright-anguishesⒶtextual note crop up all around me, and I am surprised to find that I have foolishly wasted in this drunken and nefarious traffic so many hours that might have been usefully employed. Thirty-five years ago, an idea, in the line of international copyright, was born to me in Hartford, and I took the first train and carried it, proud and rejoicing, to Boston, and exposed it to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes for his homage and admiration. This idea was very simple in construction—even a CongressmanⒶtextual note could have understoodⒶtextual note it. It was based upon principle, and it ignored policy, as being unworthy to travel in its high company. It proposed that our copyright law should be so amended as to extend each and every one of its protections and benevolences to all foreign authors upon the same terms as thoseⒶtextual note enjoyed by the American author; that this apparent grace should be extended not as a grace but as the foreign author’s right Ⓐtextual note , thus putting the foreign author’s clothes and his book upon the same basis—as being his property, and not righteously and fairly filchable from him by any governmentⒶtextual note, Christian or pagan. And finally, this recognition of the foreign author’s right to his property was to be a gratis Ⓐtextual note act; nothing was to be required of any foreign government in return; the act was to be a simple act of justice, and unsullied and undegradedⒶtextual note by any trading and traffickingⒶtextual note in, and selling of, said justice.

Dr. Holmes laughed at this project most cruelly and cordiallyⒺexplanatory note. He said it was Utopian; that governments didn’t deal in gratis contributions of pecuniarily valuable graces; that [begin page 287] governments did not trade in dreams and romance; that they did not give something for nothing; that it had been their settled policy, from the beginnings of civilizationⒶtextual note—andⒶtextual note earlier, for that matter—to always require something for something in a trade with a foreign government, and also always to try to get two somethings for one something, and accomplish it if humanly possible. He said that if our Government should do this juvenile thing, all the other Christian governments would laugh at it, and would gladly accept our sentimental charity and chuckle over it, and never dream of furnishing anything in return.

I was sorry to learn that apparently it is only Christian peoples Ⓐtextual note that stand for Christian morals and teach them from the pulpit, and in the schools, and that Christian governments Ⓐtextual note , placed in power by these same moral people, have no public morals, but deride them, and do it frankly, openly, aboveboardⒶtextual note, and even boastfully. I was only half as old, then, as I am now, and I did not know, then, as I know now, that our American governments, municipal, state, and federal, are very poor in public Ⓐtextual note morals, while the men that constitute these governments are in most cases properly equipped with private morals and live up to them in private life.

I contended that my plan was a good one, even as a measure of policy; that while it might be very true that the English Government Ⓐtextual note might laugh in its sleeve at our romantic exhibition of justice and cleanliness, the English people’s Ⓐtextual note attitude would be very different; that they would be ashamed to receive a common justice at our hands without a return,Ⓐtextual note and would demand that for shame’s sake, and for decency’s sake, we be met half way, and British honor and fairness be saved from reproach. I used that argument, but, at the same time, I really cared not a farthing about a foreign return of our fair-dealingⒶtextual note. In my capacity as just a human being, I was not able to conceive of myself entering into an agreement with another human being to leave his property unstolen provided he would respect mine in the same way; and governments being nothing more than assemblages of human beings representative of the people, and ostensibly selected for character and intelligence, I was not able to understand howⒶtextual note they could propagateⒶtextual note thieving, encourage it, applaud it, and stubbornly refuse to respect property rights, and still keep their own self-respectⒶtextual note.

I ventured another argument. I said we had been living on stolen English literature ever since the discovery of America by Columbus; that we were still living upon it and in that way teaching our people to envy and worship kings, emperors, dukes, high birth, hereditary privilege, and many other offensively undemocratic things; that we were still stealing this unwholesome literature, and thereby rooting and establishing monarchical and aristocratic ideals in the hearts of our nation; and yet, most incongruously, parents, schools, colleges, universities, and Fourth of July stump orators were all engaged in deriding and abusing these very ideals and trying to train the nation in a wholesome disrespect forⒶtextual note them. I said that just at the present time England ought to be very glad, and indeed eager, to accept my proposition, because we were stealing fiftyⒶtextual note books from her where she stole one from us; but that a time could come, and probably would come, when this condition of things would be reversed; when her population would no longer be only [begin page 288] a third short of our own, but would have well nighⒶtextual note disappeared under our swarming accumulations of the human animal, and we should be furnishing fiftyⒶtextual note books to her Ⓐtextual note one, and anxiously and prayerfullyⒶtextual note wishing an international copyright law could be arranged on a moral basis, leaving policy out.

However, I did not convince Dr. Holmes. He made game of all my notions, and I went back home very much wilted, and dropped the international copyright scheme out of my mind. I had not mentioned it to any one except Dr. Holmes, and I was glad of that, and made up my mind that I would not furnish anybody else an opportunity to laugh at me. But as it turned out, I had not been so very unstatesmanlike after all. Fourteen years later the Hawley International Copyright Bill, which I have already spoken of, came before Congress, and it was just my scheme over again. But it stood no chance; we were a Christian nation with private and effective Christian morals; our GovernmentⒶtextual note was a Christian government with Christian public morals, and a moral Hawley Bill stood no more chance there than it would have stood in that place whither so many Congresses have gone,Ⓐtextual note and will go.