Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
A Tariff Advocate on Literary Copyright
By Henry Charles Carey (1793–1879)A
The facts or ideas contained in a book constitute its body. The language in which they are conveyed to the reader constitutes the clothing of the body. For the first no copyright is allowed. Humboldt spent many years of his life in collecting facts relative to the southern portion of this continent; yet so soon as he gave them to the light they ceased to be his, and became the common property of all mankind. Captain Wilkes and his companions spent several years in exploring the Southern Ocean, and brought from there a vast amount of new facts, all of which became at once common property. Sir John Franklin made numerous expeditions to the North, during which he collected many facts of high importance, for which he had no copyright. So with Park, Burkhard, and others, who lost their lives in the exploration of Africa. Captain McClure has just accomplished the North-west Passage, yet has he no exclusive right to the publication of the fact. So has it ever been. For thousands of years men like these—working men, abroad and at home—have been engaged in the collection of facts; and thus there has been accumulated a vast body of them, all of which have become common property, while even the names of most of the men by whom they were collected have passed away. Next to these come the men who have been engaged in the arrangement of facts and in their comparison, with a view to deduce therefrom the laws by which the world is governed, and which constitute science. Copernicus devoted his life to the study of numerous facts, by aid of which he was at length enabled to give to the world a knowledge of the great fact that the earth revolved around the sun; but he had therein, from the moment of its publication, no more property than had the most violent of his opponents. The discovery of other laws occupied the life of Kepler, but he had no property in them. Newton spent many years of his life in the composition of his “Principia,” yet in that he had no copyright, except for the mere clothing in which his ideas were placed before the world. The body was common property. So, too, with Bacon and Locke, Leibnitz and Descartes, Franklin, Priestley, and Davy, Quesnay, Turgot, and Adam Smith, Lamarck and Cuvier, and all other men who have aided in carrying science to the point at which it has now arrived. They have had no property in their ideas. If they labored, it was because they had a thirst for knowledge. They could expect no pecuniary reward, nor had they much reason even to hope for fame. New ideas were, necessarily, a subject of controversy; and cases are, even in our time, not uncommon, in which the announcement of an idea at variance with those commonly recorded has tended greatly to the diminution of the enjoyment of life by the man by whom it has been announced. The contemporaries of Harvey could scarcely be made to believe in the circulation of the blood. Mr. Owen might have lived happily in the enjoyment of a large fortune had he not conceived new views of society. These he gave to the world in the form of a book, that led him into controversy which has almost lasted out his life, while the effort to carry his ideas into effect has cost him his fortune. Admit that he had been right, and that the correctness of his views were now fully established, he would have in them no property whatever; nor would his books be now yielding him a shilling, because later writers would be placing them before the world in other and more attractive clothing. So is it with the books of all the men I have named. The copyright of the “Principia” would be worth nothing, as would be the case with all that Franklin wrote on electricity, or Davy on Chemistry. Few now read Adam Smith, and still fewer Bacon, Leibnitz, or Descartes. Examine where we may, we shall find that the collectors of the facts and the producers of the ideas which constitute the body of books, have received little or no reward while thus engaged in contributing so largely to the augmentation of the common property of mankind.
For what, then, is copyright given? For the clothing in which the body is produced to the world. Examine Mr. Macaulay’s “History of England” and you will find that the body is composed of what is common property. Not only have the facts been recorded by others, but the ideas, too, are derived from the works of men who have labored for the world without receiving, and frequently without the expectation of receiving, any pecuniary compensation for their labors. Mr. Macaulay has read much and carefully, and he has thus been enabled to acquire great skill in arranging and clothing his facts; but the reader of his books will find in them no contribution to positive knowledge. The works of men who make contributions of that kind are necessarily controversial and distasteful to the reader; for which reason they find few readers, and never pay their authors. Turn now to our own authors, Prescott and Bancroft, who have furnished us with historical works of so great excellence, and you will find a state of things precisely similar. They have taken a large quantity of materials out of the common stock, in which you, and I, and all of us have an interest; and those materials they have so reclothed as to render them attractive of purchasers; but this is all they have done. Look to Mr. Webster’s works, and you will find it the same. He was a great reader. He studied the Constitution carefully, with a view to understand what were the views of its authors, and those views he reproduced in different and more attractive clothing, and there his work ended. He never pretended, as I think, to furnish the world with any new ideas; and if he had done so, he could have claimed no property in them. Few now read the heavy volumes containing the speeches of Fox and Pitt. They did nothing but reproduce ideas that were common property, and in such clothing as answered the purposes of the moment. Sir Robert Peel did the same. The world would now be just as wise had he never lived, for he made no contribution to the general stock of knowledge. The great work of Chancellor Kent is, to use the words of Judge Story, “but a new combination and arrangement of old materials, in which the skill and judgment of the author in the selection and exposition, and accurate use of those materials, constitute the basis of his reputation, as well as of his copyright.” The world at large is the owner of all the facts that have been collected, and of all the ideas that have been deduced from them, and its right in them is precisely the same that the planter has in the bale of cotton that has been raised on his plantation; and the course of proceeding of both has, thus far, been precisely similar; whence I am induced to infer that, in both cases, right has been done. When the planter hands his cotton to the spinner and the weaver, he does not say, “Take this and convert it into cloth, and keep the cloth;” but he does say, “Spin and weave this cotton, and for so doing you shall have such interest in the cloth as will give you a fair compensation for your labor and skill, but, when that shall have been paid, the cloth will be mine.” This latter is precisely what society, the owner of facts and ideas, says to the author: “Take these raw materials that have been collected, put them together, and clothe them after your own fashion, and for a given time we will agree that nobody else shall present them in the same dress. During that time you may exhibit them for your own profit, but at the end of that period the clothing will become common property, as the body now is. It is to the contributions of your predecessors to our common stock that you are indebted for the power to make your book, and we require you, in your turn, to contribute towards the augmentation of the stock that is to be used by your successors.” This is justice, and to grant more than this would be injustice.
Let us turn now, for a moment, to the producers of works of fiction. Sir Walter Scott had carefully studied Scottish and Border history, and thus had filled his mind with facts preserved, and ideas produced, by others, which he reproduced in a different form. He made no contribution to knowledge. So, too, with our own very successful Washington Irving. He drew largely upon the common stock of ideas, and dressed them up in a new, and what has proved to be a most attractive form. So, again, with Mr. Dickens. Read his “Bleak House” and you will find that he has been a most careful observer of men and things, and has thereby been enabled to collect a great number of facts that he has dressed up in different forms, but that is all he has done. He is in the condition of a man who had entered a large garden and collected a variety of the most beautiful flowers growing therein, of which he had made a fine bouquet. The owner of the garden would naturally say to him: “The flowers are mine, but the arrangement is yours. You cannot keep the bouquet, but you may smell it, or show it for your own profit, for an hour or two, but then it must come to me. If you prefer it, I am willing to pay you for your services, giving you a fair compensation for your time and taste.” This is exactly what society says to Mr. Dickens, who makes such beautiful literary bouquets. What is right in the individual, cannot be wrong in the mass of individuals of which society is composed. Nevertheless, the author objects to this, insisting that he is owner of the bouquet itself, although he has paid no wages to the man who raised the flowers. Were he asked to do so, he would regard it as leading to great injustice.