til, in the course of years, his work is essentially different from, and far superior to, the first essay. We cannot have the advantage of the improved version. There is a set of old and worn stereotype plates in the way, the proprietor of which will not sacrifice them, nor permit another publisher to produce the corrected edition, which would as completely destroy their value as though they were melted into type metal. Who can blame him? No one likes to have a valuable property suddenly rendered valueless. "It is not human nature." Mr. Lewes is not justified in so bitterly reproaching Messrs. Appleton for their cold entertainment of his offer to them of the enlarged version of his "History of Philosophy."
"I felt," says Mr. Lewes, "that Messrs. Appleton, of New York, had, in courtesy, a prior claim, on the ground of their having reprinted the previous edition in 1857. Accordingly I wrote to them, through their London agent, stating that I considered they had a claim to the first offer, and stating, further, that the new edition was substantially a new book. [As this is an important element in the present case, allow me to add, that the edition of 1857 was in one volume 8vo, published at sixteen shillings, whereas the new edition is in two volumes 8vo, published at thirty shillings; and the work is so considerably altered and enlarged that a new title has been affixed to it, for the purpose of marking it off from its predecessors.] Questions of courtesy are, however, but ill understood by some people, and by Messrs. Appleton so ill understood that they did not even answer my letter. After waiting more than three months for an answer, I asked a friend to see their London agent on the subject, and thus I learned that Messrs. Appleton—risum teneatis, amici?—'considered they had a right to publish all future editions of my work without payment,' because ten years ago they had given the magnificent sum of twenty-five pounds to secure themselves against rivals for the second edition."
The omission to answer the author's letter, we may assume, was accidental. It is not correct to say that the publishers founded their claim to issue the new edition upon their payment of twenty-five pounds. The real difficulty was, that Messrs. Appleton possessed the plates of the first edition, and could not issue the enlarged edition without, first, destroying a property already existing, and, secondly, creating a new property at an expenditure about four times as great as the sum originally invested. The acceptance of Mr. Lewes's offer would have involved an expenditure of several thousand dollars, at a time when, for a variety of reasons, works of that character could hardly be expected to return the outlay upon them. The exclusive and certain ownership of the work might well justify its republication, even now, when it costs exactly three times as much to manufacture a book in the United States as it did seven years ago. But nothing short of this would warrant a publisher in undertaking it. The real sinners, against whom Mr. Lewes should have launched his sarcasm, are the people of the United States, who permit their instructors, both native and foreign, to be robbed of their property with impunity. Thus we see that a few hundred pounds of metal are likely to bar the entrance among us of a work which demonstrates, in the clearest and most attractive manner, the inutility of all that has hitherto gone by the name of "metaphysics," and which also indicates the method of investigation from which good results are to be rationally hoped for.
It is the grossest injustice to hold American publishers responsible for the system of ill-regulated plunder which they have inherited, and which injures them more immediately and palpably than any other class, excepting alone the class producing the commodity in which they deal. There are no business men more honorable or more generous than the publishers of the United States, and especially honorable and considerate are they toward authors. The relation usually
