printing and republication in the United States" (I quote from the existing law, passed July 30, 1846) pay a duty of twenty per cent. ad valorem, which acts in fact as a premium of ten per cent. upon literary piracy. A law so unjust and absurd as this, one would think, need only be pointed out as an oversight, or clause interpolated by dishonourable means and overlooked, to be repealed, or at least to be liberally construed as in other cases; but one blushes to acknowledge that it is at present enforced as strictly at New York, though not at Boston, as if the American book-making resources required protection to develope them. The present tariff of ten per cent. acts most strangely and unjustly upon early English literature, of which we are ever and everlastingly boasting as ours by inheritance. I have paid an import duty of seventy-five dollars upon a single volume of Shakespeare, the first folio edition of 1623, originally published at one pound, but now, by reason of its extreme rarity, worth £150. What is the "market value" of such a book, which almost never appears in the market? Is it the published price of one pound, or this fictitious or fancy value of £150? I have paid twenty dollars duty on a small volume of Spenser's tracts, which cost me £40, though originally published probably for not more than ten shillings. On the first edition of Milton's Paradise Lost I have paid almost as much duty for a single volume as Milton received of Symons, his publisher, for the entire copyright. Yet we are always bragging of Shakespeare, Spenser, Bacon, Milton, and all other English authors published prior to the year 1776, as belonging as much to us as to England! Then, Jonathan, if they be really ours, why tax them so enormously as foreign merchandize? Old books printed prior to the year 1802 enter England duty-free, and those printed since 1802 pay only fifteen shillings a hundred-weight, if they come from a country enjoying with Great Britain an international copyright, if not, they pay thirty shillings. Books should pay duty by weight or by volume, if at all; but in a country like ours, where intelligence and education are not only our proudest boast, but are the basis of our institutions, and where for the want of an international copyright law the best of our books (with a few exceptions) are pirated reprints without compensation of the authors of the mother-country, the least we could honourably do, one would think, with a clear conscience and a full treasury, would be to admit foreign books, especially those in our own language, free of duty. Christian Reader, to you as an American and a man who acts wisely, deals justly, and votes intelligently, I submit these considerations, relying on you and the "assembled wisdom of our nation" in the coming session of Congress, to see these matters placed in a shape more honourable to the "Model Republic," being deliberately, Yours to be commanded, HENRY STEVENS, Morley's Hotel, Charing Cross, London, Nov. 10, 1853. of Vermont. "SOME books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common distilled waters, flashy things: Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, be had need have a present wit; and if he read little he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend; Abeunt studia in mores; ' nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies."-BACON. |