copies of it in his printer's or publisher's hands. I presume that there is no doubt whatever that those copies are his property in the strictest sense of the word, and that the law will protect him against any person who proposes to rob him of that property. I have recently met with the argument (and, singularly enough, professing to proceed from the straitest school of free-traders), that the state, or the Legislature acting for it, should, as I understand the argument, regard books as a kind of property to be disposed of mainly for the benefit of the persons who read them, and that the state should take upon itself somewhat the same function as it used formerly to do when it passed sumptuary laws, and should regulate the amount of profit to be derived by the author according to what it considers fair and reasonable. That strikes me as being a reversal of all rules of commercial policy at present recognized. But supposing it to be admitted that that is a right and just thing to do, I do not see why you should not go a step further. If, for example, I had had the good fortune to write such a work as "Hamlet" or the "Principia," it would appear, according to that line of argument, that the state would be justified in seizing all the copies of it, and in disposing of them in such a manner as might be conducive to their distribution, and that mainly on the ground of the great service to the public which those books might render. I do not know whether any one has carried the argument so far as that, but it appears to me to be the legitimate outcome of it. However, an author who has an edition in his publisher's hands has a right, at present, to regard it as his absolute property, to deal with as he pleases, and he has a further right as vender to make any contract which he pleases with any person who proposes to be a purchaser of one of the copies of that book; that is to say, if he chooses to make it a condition of sale that the purchaser shall not copy or multiply by printing the work which the vender sells under certain penalties, I apprehend that the existing law will enable him to recover those penalties from any person who violates that contract. The property being his own, he has a right to make any conditions he pleases with regard to the disposal of it; the person who buys buys on those conditions, and is subject to them. That appears to me to be the natural mode of looking at the trade in books as a branch of commerce which is subject to the ordinary rules of free trade, namely, that a man shall make any contract which he pleases with regard to the disposal of his property. And I look upon the copyright law simply as a means of overcoming the inconvenience which would arise out of that state of things; it would be a very cumbrous process; it would largely interfere with the sale of books, and it would doubtless be very hard to recover the penalties in the case of a breach of contract. So far from copyright law being any favor which the state confers upon the author, any privilege which is granted to him by the state, it seems to me that it is simply a mode of preventing such inconvenience as I have just referred to; so that in my
