the absence of international copyright, yet it is false that these authors are preyed upon in the unqualified way asserted by the "Times." There are, of course, American publishers, and plenty of them, who are thoroughly unscrupulous; but there are others, and they are not a few, who do the best they can under the present demoralizing system to compensate foreign authors for their work. They pay them by voluntary arrangement, not the rates that they are accustomed to at home, and not always perhaps as much as they might, but often, as I happen to know, to their own loss, when books are reprinted by others and the market supplied by degraded editions on which the author receives nothing. In the absence of an international copyright law, this voluntary action of American publishers is the only thing practicable or possible to mitigate the barbarism of the situation. Imperfect as it may be, it is an honest procedure in behalf of the foreign author; and it is now practiced to an extent that should materially qualify those wholesale charges of piracy. The present case is to be regarded in the light of these considerations; and I think it will be found that the lesson to be drawn from it is quite different from that which has been drawn by the English press.
So far as the above correspondence is concerned, the motives that impelled me to take the share I had in bringing out the suppressed book are to be gathered only from a scrap in a hurried private letter to Mr. Spencer; but, as my act is now branded as piratical, I must be excused for stating more fully the reasons by which I was actually influenced in the course taken.
Mr. Harrison had an important controversy with Herbert Spencer on a grave subject, which was published in the "Nineteenth Century." In printing their papers I have the right to assume their purpose to be that they should be read as widely as possible. There was much interest in this country to follow this discussion, and we accordingly printed the articles in "The Popular Science Monthly."
But, when the controversy was finished, there was a call for its republication in a separate form, more convenient, accessible, and cheaper than in the pages of a magazine. The demand was reasonable, and I was anxious to comply with it, that the discussion might be disseminated as widely as possible. I, moreover, desired the republication for the same reason that I had urged Mr. Spencer to go on with the controversy with Mr. Harrison. Although knowing the low state of his working-power, and how important it was that he should not be interrupted by such side-issues in the prosecution of the great philosophical work upon which he has been engaged for many years, it seemed to me of greater importance that he should seize the opportunity offered by Mr. Harrison's attack to develop more fully his fundamental religious opinions. He had published but little upon that subject for a long time, his views had been much controverted and much misunder-
