and they are wise. Distance, difference of religious beliefperhaps, that unfriendly feeling, the natural effect of much wrong inflicted, and much wrong endured-may have deterred the people of this country from resenting the insult offered to the Irish nation as they would have resented the same insult to themselves. But, sir, I grieve for the short-sightedness of my countrymen; Ireland is the first field-it will not be the last. I believe this struggle is just as much for Yorkshire and Kent as Cork and Kerry. And the day when the constituencies worked upon by this Bill shall send up to this House representatives regarded by the Irish people as enemies, will be dark and dreary for the liberties of England.

But it is not necessary that I should resort to topics like these. The derisive expressions of gentlemen opposite, I suppose intimate that they would be unjust to Ireland alone. Well, whether they mean this injustice to be confined to Ireland or to extend to England, I hardly know how to express my reprobation of so odious and disgusting a measure. The people of Ireland have been already hardly enough used. When we granted them religious emancipation, we took away their franchise. By the Reform Bill, a very small portion of what was before taken away was restored; and now the noble lord by this Bill would take away the little which the Reform Bill bestowed. There is only one Bill on the table relative to the registration in England-a Bill laid on the table by the same hand that laid the Reform Bill there, and one worthy of that hand. But, as regards Ireland, we are now discussing a Bill made up of the very worst features of all the Bills that have been of late years introduced on the subject of registration-of the English system, of the system at present existing in Ireland, and of the ill-considered plan of Sir Michael O'Loghlen. Yes! the ill-considered plan of Sir Michael O'Loghlen. Each and all of these systems have been made to contribute their evil, but not one of their redeeming, qualities; and the noble lord, out of those evil qualities, has framed his Bill. What must be the feelings of the people of Ireland when they compare that Bill with the Bill laid on the table by my noble friend for the settlement of the registration

system in England? To perpetuate differences and to excite discord seems to be the object of the noble lord. Not such was the spirit in which the great Minister who carried the Act of Union treated the people of Ireland. The words which he quoted seem to have been forgotten by the noble lord.

Paribus se legibus ambæ

Invictæ gentes æterna in fœdera mittant.

These were the sentiments of the promoter of the Act of Union. I venerate that great measure. I am ready to defend it against the open enmity of the hon. and learned member for Dublin, as against the still more dangerous friendship of the noble lord. I am satisfied that for every repealer made by the eloquence of the hon. and learned member for Dublin, ten would be produced by the Bill of the noble lord, if it passed in its present shape, and unmitigated. Should a universal cry for repeal of the Union arise in Ireland on the passing of the Bill, I should not regard it in any other light than as the natural succession of effect and cause. It would be puerile-nay, it would be hypocritical to go on misgoverning, and to pretend to hope that the results of good government would follow; to assume that those whom we treat as aliens ought to feel towards us as brothers— to oppose agitation and multiply the grievances by which agitation is alone supported, and by which it was originated-to raise the cry of civil war whereon the people of Ireland called for a repeal of the legislative Union, and at the very time when you are taking steps to annul all those rights and privileges without which the legislative Union would be but an empty

name.

LITERARY COPYRIGHT.

FEBRUARY 5, 1841.

On the Order of the Day for the Second Reading of the Copyright Bill.

It

THOUGH, Sir, it is in some sense agreeable to approach a subject with which political animosities have nothing to do, I offer myself to your notice with some reluctance. It is painful to me to take a course which may possibly be misunderstood or misrepresented as unfriendly to the interests of literature and literary men. is painful to me, I will add, to oppose my hon. and learned friend (Mr. Serjeant Talfourd) on a question which he has taken up from the purest motives, and which he regards with a parental interest. These feelings have hitherto kept me silent when the law of copyright has been under discussion. But as I am, on full consideration, satisfied that the measure before us will, if adopted, inflict grievous injury on the public, without conferring any compensating advantage on men of letters, I think it my duty to avow that opinion and to defend it.

The first thing to be done, sir, is to settle on what principles the question is to be argued. Are we free to legislate for the public good, or are we not? Is this a question of expediency, or is it a question of right? Many of those who have written and petitioned against the existing state of things treat the question as one of right. The law of Nature, according to them, gives to every man a sacred and indefeasible property in his own ideas, in the fruits of his own reason and imagination. The Legislature has, indeed, the power to take away this property, just as it has the power to pass an act of attainder for cutting off an innocent man's head without a trial. But as such an act of attainder would be legal murder, so would an act invading the right of an author to his copy be, according to these gentlemen, legal robbery. Now, sir, if this be so, let justice be done, cost what it

may.

I am not prepared, like my hon. and learned friend, to agree to a compromise between right and expediency, to commit an injustice for the public convenience. But I must say that his theory soars far beyond the reach of my faculties. It is not necessary to go, on the present occasion, into a metaphysical inquiry about the origin of the right of property, and certainly nothing but the strongest necessity would lead me to discuss a subject so likely to be distasteful to the House. I I agree, I own, with Paley, in thinking that property is the creature of the law, and that the law which creates property can be defended only on this ground, that it is a law bencficial to mankind. But it is unnecessary to debate that point. For even if I believed in a natural right of property, independent of utility and anterior to legislation, I should still deny that this right could survive the original proprietor.

Few, I apprehend, even of those who have studied in the most mystical and sentimental schools of moral philosophy, will be disposed to maintain that there is a natural law of succession older and of higher authority than any human code. If there be, it is quite certain that we have abuses to reform much more serious than any connected with the question of copyright. For this natural law can be only one, and the modes of succession in the Queen's dominions are twenty. To go no further than England, land generally descends to the eldest son. In Kent the sons share and share alike; in many districts the youngest takes the whole. Formerly a portion of a man's personal property was secured to his family. It was only of the residue that he could dispose by will. Now he can dispose of the whole by will. But a few years ago, you enacted that the will should not be valid unless there were two witnesses. If a man dies intestate, his personal property generally goes according to the statute of distributions. But there are local customs which modify that statute. Now, which of all these systems is conformed to the eternal standard of right? Is it primogeniture, or gavelkind, or borough English? Are wills jure divino? Are the two witnesses jure divino? Might not the pars rationabilis of our old law have as fair a claim to be regarded as of celestial insti

tution? Was the statute of distributions enacted in heaven long before it was adopted by Parliament? Or is it to custom of York, or to custom of London, that this pre-eminence belongs?

Surely, sir, even those who hold that there is a natural right of property must admit that rules prescribing the manner in which the effects of deceased persons shall be distributed are purely arbitrary, and originate altogether in the will of the Legislature. If so, sir, there is no controversy between my hon. and learned friend and myself as to the principles on which this question is to be argued. For the existing law gives an author copyright during his natural life; nor do I propose to invade that privilege, which I should, on the contrary, be prepared to defend strenuously against any assailant. The point in issue is, how long after an author's death the State shall recognise a copyright in his representatives and assigns? and it can, I think, hardly be disputed by any rational man that this is a point which the Legislature is free to determine in the way which may appear to be most conducive to the general good. We may now, therefore, I think, descend from these high regions, where we are in danger of being lost in the clouds, to firm ground and clear light. Let us look at this question like legislators, and, after fairly balancing conveniences and inconveniences, pronounce between the existing law of copyright and the law now proposed to us.

The question of copyright, sir, like most questions of civil prudence, is neither black nor white, but grey. The system of copyright has great advantages and great disadvantages; and it is our business to ascertain what these are, and then to make an arrangement under which the advantages may be as far as possible secured, and the disadvantages as far as possible excluded. The charge which I bring against my hon. and learned friend's Bill is this-that it leaves the advantages nearly where they are at present, and increases the disadvantages at least fourfold. The advantages arising from a system of copyright are obvious. It is desirable that we should have a supply of good books; we cannot have such a supply unless men of