there are any rights; nor, if he has rights, whether they will be respected. This chaos has taken to itself the pleasant and delusive name of "Courtesy of the Trade." Before the "reign of law" is established in any province of human affairs, we generally see men feeling their way to it, trying to find something else that will answer the purpose, endeavoring to reduce the chaos of conflicting claims to some kind of rule. The publishers of the United States have been doing this for many years, and the result is the unwritten code called the Courtesy of the Trade,—a code defective in itself, with neither judge to expound it, jury to decide upon it, nor sheriff to execute it. This code consisted at first of one rule,—If a publisher issues a foreign work, no other American publisher shall issue it. But it often happened that two or three publishers began or desired to begin the printing of the same book. To meet this and other cases, other laws were added, until at present the code, as laid down by the rigorists, consists of the following rules:—
1. If a publisher issues an edition of a foreign work, he has acquired an exclusive right to it for a period undefined.
2. If a publisher is the first to announce his intention to publish a foreign work, that announcement gives him an exclusive right to publish it.
3. If a publisher has already issued a work of a foreign author, he has acquired thereby an exclusive right to the republication of all subsequent works by the same author. 4. The purchase of advance sheets for publication in a periodical gives a publisher the exclusive right to publish the same in any other form.
5. All and several of these rights may be bought and sold, like any other kind of property.
There is a kind of justice in all these rules. If we could concede that a foreign author has no ownership of the coinage of his brain,—if anything but that author's free gift or purchased consent could convey that property to another,—if foreign literature is the legitimate spoil of America,— then some such a code as this would be the only method of preventing the business from degenerating into a game of unmitigated grab. In its present ill defined and most imperfect state, this system of "courtesy" scarcely mitigates the game at all; and, accordingly, in "the trade" instead of the friendly feeling that would naturally exist among honorable men in the highest branch of business, we find feuds, heart-burnings, and a grievous sense of wrongs unredressed and unredressable. Some houses "announce" everything that is announced on the other side of the Atlantic, so as to have the first choice. Smaller firms, seeing these announcements, dare not undertake any foreign work, even though the great house never decides to publish the book upon which the smaller had fixed its attention. It is only under the reign of law that the rights of the weak have any security. In the most exquisitely organized system of piracy, no man can rely upon the enjoyment of a right which he is not strong enough personally to defend. It is not every house that can crush a rival edition by selling thousands of expensive books at half their cost. Between the giant houses that tower above him, and the yellow-covered gentry that prowl about his feet, an American publisher of only ordinary resources has a game to play which is really too difficult for the limited capacities of man. Who can wonder that most of them lose it?
One effect of this courtesy system is, that many excellent works, which it would be a public benefit to have reprinted here are not reprinted. Another is, that corrected or improved editions cannot be given to the American reader without bringing down upon the publisher the enmity or the vengeance of a rival. It is not common in Europe for the first editions of important works to be stereotyped; but in America they always are. The European author frequently makes extensive additions and valuable emendations in each successive edition; un
