30 MARCH 1872, Page 23

Literary Copyright. By J. C. Hotten. (Hotten.)—Few of Mr. Hotten's

readers will differ from him when he states his opinion that copyright should not be perpetual. Books of a former age are already almost crowded out by the enormous multiplication of new litera- ture, and would be at a still greater disadvantage if they lost the cheapness which the extinction of proprietary rights permits. When he comes to deal with other questions, he will meet with less acquies- cence. Such maxims as "rights are the creation of public law " and "where there is no property there can be no theft" will scarcely impose upon any reader. Mr. Hotten introduces them it propos of the question of international copyright ; as the essence of the complaint is that the law is culpably defective, and that interested persons hinder it from being amended, they are simply worthless. The fees of a physician and a barrister are not claimed by any right that is the creation of law, nor are they legally property, but a patient or a solicitor who should refuse to pay them would be pro- perly considered a very shabby fellow. We shall take leave to apply the same epithet to anybody who takes advantage of a defect in the municipal law either of this country or of America to deprive an author of his natural sight to a share in the profits that accrue from what he has written. There 18, we think, a very serious error, and one which vitiates Mr. Hotten's argument from beginning to end, in the assertion that "a supply of good and cheap works" is the principal object of legislation. The object of legislation in this and other matters is to do right : if we can get cheap and good books only by not doing right, we shall be better without them. We will content ourselves with one other remark. We do not know what other "public writers" may have done, but if we have ever blamed a publisher for publishing at a very low price some work of which the copyright has expired, it has been for one very simple reason, that the public are not honestly told what they are to get. If you buy one of Hallam's books without his corrections or one of Scott's "Poems" without his notes, you do not get what you expect.