seem applicable to this case, will be found es- indicted volume conveys! What can the sentially to govern it. He refers to the pas- telescope disclose of worlds and suns and syssage in the Bible, “The fool hath said in his tems in the heavens above us, or the microheart, There is no God," and shows how the pub- scope detect in the descending scale of various lisher of the Book of God itself might be life, endowed with a speech and a language charged with atheism, by the insertion only like that with which Shelley, being dead, here of the latter division of the sentence. It is not speaks Not even do the most serene prosurely by the division of a sentence only that ductions of poets, whose faculties in this world the context may be judged; but by the general have attained comparative harmony-strongly intent of him who publishes what is in itself as they plead for the immortality of the mind offensive, for the purpose of curious record- which produced them-afford so unanswerable of controversy-of evidence-of example. The a proof of a life to come, as the mighty empublisher of Shelley has not indeed said "The bryo which this book exhibits;-as the course, fool hath said in his heart, There is no God;" the frailty, the imperfection, with the dark but he has in effect said, The poet has tried to curtain dropped on all! It is, indeed, when say with his lips "There is no God," but his best surveyed, but the infancy of an eternal genius and his heart belie his words! What being; an infancy wayward but gigantic; an indeed does the publisher of Shelley's works infancy which we shall never fully understand, virtually say, where he thus presents to his till we behold its development "when time readers this record of the poet's life and death? shall be no more"-when doubt shall be dis He says-Behold! Here is a spectacle which solved in vision-" when this corruptible chall angels may admire and weep over! Here is have put on incorruption, and when this a poet of fancy the most ethereal--feelings the mortal shall have put on immortality!" most devout-charity the most Christian-enthralled by opinions the most cold, hollow, and debasing! Here is a youth endowed with that sensibility to the beautiful and the grand which peoples his minutes with the perceptions of years-who, with a spirit of self-sacrifice which the eldest Christianity might exult in if found in one of its martyrs, is ready to lay down that intellectual being-to be lost in loss itself -if by annihilation he could multiply the enjoyments and hasten the progress of his species-and yet, with strange wilfulness, rejecting that religion in form to which in essence he is imperishably allied! Observe these radiant fancies-pure and cold as frostworkhow would they be kindled by the warmth of Christian love! Track those "thoughts that wander through eternity," and think how they would repose in their proper home! And trace the inspired, yet erring youth, poem after poem-year after year, month after monthhow shall you see the icy fetters which encircle his genius gradually dissolve; the wreaths of mist ascend from his path; and the distance spread out before him peopled with human affections, and skirted by angel wings! See how this seeming atheist begins to adorehow the divine image of suffering and love presented at Calvary, never unfelt, begins to be seen-and in its contemplation the softened, not yet convinced poet exclaims, in his Prometheus, of the followers of Christ

The vise, the pure, the lofty, and the just, Whom thy slaves hate-for being like to thee! And thus he proceeds-with light shining more and more towards the perfect day, which ne was not permitted to realize in this world. As you trace this progress, alas! Death veils it-veils it, not stops it-and this perturbed, imperfect, but glorious being is hidden from us "Till the sea shall give up its dead!" What say you now to the book which exhibits this spectacle, and stops with this catastrophe! Is it a libel on religion and God? Talk of proofs of Divine existence in the wonders of the material universe, there is nothing in anynor in all-compared to the proof which this

Let me, before I sit down, entreat you to ask yourselves where the course of prosecution will stop if you crown with success Mr. Hetherington's revenge. Revenge, did I say? I recall the word. Revenge means the returning of injury for injury-an emotion most unwise and unchristian, but still human;—the satisfaction of a feeling of ill-regulated justice cherished by a heart which judges bitterly in its own cause. But this attempt to retaliate on one who is a stranger to the evil suffered-this infliction of misery for doing that which the prosecutor has maintained within these works the right of all men to do-has no claim to the savage plea of wild justice; but is poor, cruel, paltry injustice; as bare of excuse as ever tyrant, above or below the opinion of the wise and good, ever ventured to threaten. Admit its power in this case-grant its right to select for the punishment of blasphemy the exhibition of an anomaly as harmless as the stuffed aspic in a museum, or as its image on the passionless bosom of a pictured Cleopatraand what ancient, what modern history, shall be lent unchallenged to our friends? If the thousand booksellers who sell the "Paradise Lost"-from the greatest publisher in London or Edinburgh down to the proprietor of the little book-stall, where the poor wayfarer snatches a hasty glance at the grandeur and beauty of the poet, and goes on his way refreshed-may hope that genius will render to the name of Milton what they deny to that of Shelley; what can they who sell "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" hope from the prosecutor of "Queen Mab?" In that work are two celebrated chapters, sparkling with all the meretricious felicities of epigrammatic style, which, full of polished sarcasm against infant Christianity, are elaborately directed to wither the fame of its Martyrs and Confessors with bitterest scorn-two chapters which, if published at a penny each, would do more mischief than thousands of metaphysical poems; but which, retained in their apppropriate place, to be sought only by the readers of history, may serve the cause of truth by proving the poverty of the spite by

poison which may infect the soul as long as the soul shall endure-whom, to do this prose. cutor justice, I know he disclaims-may obtain true bills of indictment against any man, whọ has sold Horace, or Virgil, or Lucretius, or Ovid, or Juvenal-against all who have sold a copy of any of our old dramatists—and thus not only Congreve, and Farquhar, and Wycherley, but Fletcher, and Massinger, and Ford, and Webster, and Ben Jonson; nay, with reve

which it has been assailed, and find ample | which-children often themselves-mount the counterpoise in the sequel. The possibility chariot and board the steamboat to scatter that that this history should be suppressed by some descendant of Gibbon, who might extravagantly suppose it his duty to stifle cold and crafty sneers aimed at the first followers of Christ, was urged-and urged with success against me when I pleaded for the right of those descendants to the fruits of the labours of their ancestor; yet, if you sanction this attempt, any Hetherington may compel by law that suppression, the remote possibility of which has been accepted as a reason for deny-rence be it spoken, even Shakspeare, though ing to the posterity of the author a property in ever pure in essence, may be placed at the the work he has created! This work, invested mercy of an insect abuser of the press-unless with the peculiar interest which belongs to the juries have the courage and the virtue to picture of waning greatness, has recently been recognise the distinction between a man who printed in a cheap form, under the sanction of publishes works which are infidel or impure, a dignitary of the Established Church-a because they are infidel or impure, and publishes Christian Poet of the noblest aim-whose early them in a form and at a price which indicate genius was the pride of our fairest university, the desire that they should work out mischief, and who is now the honoured minister of the and one who publishes works in which evil of very parish in which we are assembled. If I the same kind may be found, but who publishes were now defending Mr. Milman, of whose them because, in spite of that imperfection, friendship I am justly proud, for this last and they are on the whole for the edification and cheapest and best edition of Gibbon, I could delight of mankind;-between one who tenonly resort to the arguments I am now urging ders the misehief for approbation, and one who for Mr. Moxon, and claim the benefit of the exposes it for example. And are you presame distinction between the tendency of a pared to succumb to this new censorship? book adapted to the promotion of infidelity, and Will you allow Mr. Hetherington to prescribe one which, containing incidental matter of what leaves you shall tear from the classic offence, is commended to the student with volumes in your libraries? Shall he dictate those silent guards which its form and accom- to you how much of Lord Byron-a writer far paniments supply. True it is that Mr. Milman more influential than Shelley-you shall be has accompanied the text with notes in which allowed to lend to your friends without fear of he sometimes explains or counteracts the in- his censure? Shall he drag into court the sinuations of the author; but what Notes can vast productions of the German mind, and ask be so effectual as that which follows "Queen juries to decide whether the translator of Mab"-in which Shelley's own letter is set Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and Lessing-dealforth, stating, on his authority, that the working with sacred things with a boldness to was immature, and that he did not intend it for which we are unused-are guilty of crime? the general eye? Is not the publication of this Shall he call for judgment on that stupendous letter by the publisher as decisive of his mo- work, the "Faust," with its prologue in Hea tive-not to commend the wild fancies and ven, which has been presented by my friend stormy words of the young poet to the reader's Mr. Hayward, whose able assistance I have approval, but to give them as part of his to-day, with happy vividness to English readbiography, as the notes of Mr. Milman are ers-and ask a jury to take it in their hand, of that which no one doubts, his desire to make and at an hour's glance to decide whether it is the perusal of Gibbon healthful? Prosper this a libel on God, or a hymn by Genius to His attempt, and what a field of speculative prose- praise? Do you not feel those matters are cution will open before us! Every publisher for other seasons-for another sphere?-If of the works of Rousseau, of Voltaire, of Vol- so, will you, in the dark-without knowledge ney, of Hume-of the Classics and of their-without evidence-sanction a prosecution Translations-works regarded as innoxious, which will, in its result, impose new and because presented in a certain aspect and strange tasks on juries who may decide on offered to a certain class, will become liable to other trials; which may destroy the just every publisher of penny blasphemy who may allowance accorded to learning even under suffer or hate or fear the law;--nor of such absolute monarchies; and place every manj only, but of every small attorney in search of who hereafter shall print, or sell, or give, or practice, who may find in the machinery of the lend, any one of a thousand volumes sancCrown-office the facilities of extortion. Nor tioned by ages, at the mercy of any Prosewill the unjust principle you are asked to sanc-cutor who for malice-for gain-or mere mistion stop with retaliation in the case of alleged chief, may choose to denounce him as a blasphemy--the retailer of cheap lascivious- blasphemer? ness, if checked in his wicked trade, will have And now, I commend into your hands the his revenge against the works of the mighty cause of the defendant-the cause of genius dead in which some tinge of mortal stain may-the cause of learning-the cause of history unfortunately be detected. The printer of one-the cause of thought. I have not sought to of those penny atrocities which are thrust into the hands of ingenuous youths when bound on duty or innocent pleasure, the emissaries of

maintain it by assailing the law as it has been expounded by courts, and administered by juries; which, if altered, should be changed

by the authority of the legislature, and neither by the violation of oaths, nor by the machinery which the prosecutor has employed to render it odious at the cost of those whom he himself contends to be guiltless; but I have striven to convince you, that by a just application of that law, you may hold this publication of the works of Shelley to be no crime. It has been fairly conceded that Mr. Moxon is a most respectable publisher; one who has done good service to the cause of poetry and wisdom; and one who could not intentionally publish a blasphemous work, without treason to all the associations which honour his life. Beginning his career under the auspices of Rogers, the eldest of a great age of poets, and blessed with the continued support of that excellent person, who never broke by one unworthy line the charm of moral grace which pervades his works, he has been associated with Lamb, whose kindness embraced all sects, all parties, all classes, and whose genius shed new and pleasant lights on daily life; with Southey, the pure and childlike in heart; with Coleridge, in the light of whose Christian philosophy these indicted poems would assume their true character as mournful, yet salutary specimens of power developed imperfectly in this world; and with Wordsworth, whose works so long neglected or scorned, but so long silently nur

turing tastes for the lofty and the pure, it has been Mr. Moxon's privilege to diffuse largely throughout this and other lands, and with them the sympathies which link the human heart to nature and to God, and all classes of mankind to each other! Reject then, in your justice, the charge which imputes to such a man, that by publishing this book, he has been guilty of blasphemy against the God whom he reveres! Refuse to set the fatal precedent, which will not only draw the fame of the illustrious dead into question before juries, without time to investigate their merits; which may not only harass the first publishers of these works; but which will beset the course of every bookseller, every librarian, throughout the country, with perpetual snares, and make our criminal courts the arenas for a savage warfare of literary prosecutions! Protect our noble literature from the alternative of being either corrupted or enslaved! Terminate those anxieties which this charge, so unprovoked-so undeserved-has now for months inflicted on the defendant, and his friends, by that verdict of Not Guilty, which will disappoint only those who desire that cheap blasphemy should have free course; which the noblest, and purest, and most pious of your own generation will rejoice in; and for which their posterity will honour and bless you!

SPEECH ON THE MOTION FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN A BILL TO AMEND THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT,

DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, THURSDAY, MAY 18, 1837.

Mr. SPEAKER,-In venturing to invite the at- | for hitherto, with the exception of the noble tention of the House to the state of the law affecting the property of men of letters in the results of their genius and industry, I feel that it is my duty to present their case as concisely as its nature will permit. While I believe that heir claims to some share in the consideration of the legislature will not be denied, I am aware that they appeal to feelings far different from those which are usually excited by the intellectual conflicts of this place; that the interest of their claim is not of that stirring kind which belongs to the busy present, but reflects back on the past, of which the passions are now silent, and stretches forward with speculation into the visionary future; and that the circumstances which impede their efforts and frustrate their reward, are best appreciated in the calmness of thought to which those efforts are akin. I shall therefore intrude as briefly as I can on the patience of the House, while I glance at the history of the evils of which they complain; suggest the principles on which I think them entitled to redress; and state the outlines of the remedies by which I propose to relieve them.

It is, indeed, time that literature should experience some of the blessings of legislation;

boon conferred on the acted drama by the bill of my honourable friend the member for Lin coln, it has received scarcely any thing but evil. If we should now simply repeal all the statutes which have been passed under the guise of encouraging learning, and leave it to be protected only by the principles of the com, mon law, and the remedies which the common law could supply, I believe the relief would be welcome. It did not occur to our ancestors, that the right of deriving solid benefits from that which springs solely from within us-the right of property in that which the mind itself creates, and which, so far from exhausting the materials common to all men, or limiting their resources, enriches and expands them-a right of property which, by the happy peculiarity of its nature, can only be enjoyed by the proprie tor in proportion as it blesses mankind--should be exempted from the protection which is extended to the ancient appropriation of the soil, and the rewards of commercial enterprise. By the common law of England, as solemnly expounded by a majority of seven to four of the judges in the case of "Donaldson v. Beckett," and as sustained by the additional opinion of Lord Mansfield, the author of an original wor

have made the numbers equal, retaining his opinion, but expressing none. By this bare majority-against the strong opinion of the chief justice of England-was it decided that the statute of Anne has substituted a short term in copyright for an estate in fee, and the rights of authors were delivered up to the mercy of succeeding parliaments!

had FOR EVER the sole right of multiplying co- | the 'Paradise Lost;" and in 1752 to the pies, and a remedy by action, incident to every | same poem, with a life of the author, and the right, against any one who should infringe it. notes of all preceding editions. Some doubts The jurisdiction of the Star Chamber, while it having at length arisen, the question of the restrained the freedom of the press, at the same operation of the statute was, in 1760, raised by time incidentally preserved the copyright from a sort of amicable suit, "Tonson v. Collins," violation; and this was one of the pleas urged respecting the "Spectator," in which the Court for the power of licensing; for Milton, in his of Common Pleas inclined to the plaintiff, but immortal pleading for unlicensed printing, before giving judgment discovered that the states, as one of the glosses of his opponents, proceeding was collusive, and refused to pro"the just retaining by each man of his several nounce any decision. In 1766 an action was copy, which God forbid should be gainsaid." brought, Miller v. Taylor," for pirating In the special verdict in "Miller v. Taylor," Thomson's Seasons," in the Court of King's (1769,) it was found as a fact, "that before the Bench, before whom it was elaborately argued, reign of Queen Anne, it was usual to purchase and which, in 1769, gave judgment in favour of from authors the perpetual copyright of their the subsisting copyright; Lord Mansfield, Mr. books, and to assign the same from hand to Justice Willes, and Mr. Justice Aston, holding hand for valuable considerations, and to make that copyright was perpetual by the common them the subject of family settlements." In law, and not limited by the statute, except as to truth, the claim of the author to perpetual penalties, and Mr. Justice Yates dissenting copyright was never disputed, until literature from them. In 1774 the question was brought had received a fatal present in the first act of before the House of Lords, when eleven judges parliament "For its encouragement"-the 8th delivered their opinions upon it-six of whom Anne, c. 19, passed in 1709; in which the mis- thought the copyright limited, while five held chief lurked, unsuspected, for many years be-it perpetual; and Lord Mansfield, who would fore it was called into action to limit the rights it professed, and it was probably intended, to secure. By that act, the sole right of printing and reprinting their works was recognised in authors for the term of fourteen years, and, if they should be living at its close, for another period of the same duration,-and piracy was made punishable during those periods by the forfeiture of the books illegally published, and of a penny for every sheet in the offender's custody-one-half to the use of the queen's majesty the other halfpenny, not to the poor author, whose poverty the sum might seem to befit, but to the informer; and the condition of enjoying these summary remedies, was the entry of the work at Stationers' Hall. This act, "For the encouragement of learning," which, like the priest in the fable, while it vouchsafes the blessing denies the farthing, also confers a power of the Archbishop of Canterbury and other great functionaries to regulate the prices of books, which was rejected by the Lords, restored on conference with the Commons, and repealed in the following reign; and also confers on learning the benefit of a forced contribution of nine copies of every work, on the best paper, for the use of certain libraries. Except in this last particular, the act seems to have remained a dead letter down to the year 1760, no one, as far as I can trace, having thought it worth while to sue for its halfpennies, and no one having suggested that its effect had been silently to restrict the common-law right of authors to the term during which its remedies were to operate. So far was this construction from being suspected, that in this interval of fifty years the Court of Chancery repeatedly interfered by injunction to restrain the piracy of books in which the statutable copyright had long expired. This protection was extended in 1735 to The Whole Duty of Man," the first assignment of which had been made seventyeight years before; in the same year to the "Miscellanies of Pope and Swift;" in 1736 to "Nelson's Festivals and Fasts;" in 1739 to

Until this decision, the copyright vested in the universities had only shared the protection which it was supposed had existed for all, and in fact their copyright was gone. But they immediately resorted to the legislature and ob tained an act, 15 George III., c. 63, "For enabling the two universities in England, the four universities of Scotland, and the several colleges of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester, to hold in perpetuity the copyright in books given or bequeathed to them for the advancement of learning and the purposes of education; and the like privilege was, by 41 George III., c. 107, extended to Trinity College, Dublin. With the immunities thus conferred on the universities, or rather with this exemption from the wrong incidentally inflicted on individuals, I have no intention to interfere; neither do I seek to relieve literature from the obligation, recently lightened by the just consideration of parliament, of supplying the principal universities with copies of all works at the author's charge. I only seek to apply the terms of the statute, which recites that the purposes of those who bequeathed copyright to the universities for the advancement of learning would be frustrated unless the exclusive right of printing and reprinting such books be secured in perpetuity, to support the claim of individuals to some extended interest in their own. I only ask that some of the benefits enjoyed by the venerable nurseries of learning and of genius should attend the works of those whose youth they have inspired and fostered, and of those also who, although fortune has denied to them that inestimable blessing, look with reverence upon the great institutions of