able to make on the present state of the country, have convinced me that the time has arrived when a great concession must be made to the Democracy of England; that the question, whether the change be in itself good or bad, has become a question of secondary importance; hat, good or bad, the thing must be done; that a law as strong as the laws of attraction and motion has decreed it. I well know that history, when we look at it in small portions, may be so construed as to mean anything; that it may be interpreted in as many ways as a Delphic oracle. "The French Revolution," says one expositor, "was the effect of concession." "Not so," cries another; "the French Revolution was produced by the obstinacy of an arbitrary Government." These controversies can never be brought to any decisive test, or to any satisfactory conclusion. But, as I believe that history, when we look at it in small fragments, proves anything or nothing, so I believe that it is full of useful and precious instruction when we contemplate it in large portions, when we take in, at one view, the whole life-time of great societies. We have heard it said a hundred times, during these discussions, that the People of England are more free than ever they were; that the Government is more Democratic than ever it was; and this is urged as an argument against Reform. I admit the fact, but I deny the inference. The history of England is the history of a Government constantly giving way, sometimes peaceably, sometimes after a violent struggle, but constantly giving way before a Nation which has been constantly advancing. It is not sufficient to look merely at the form of Government. We must look to the state of the public mind. The worst tyrant that ever had his neck wrung in modern Europe might have passed for a paragon in Persia or Morocco. Our Indian subjects submit patiently to a monopoly of salt. We tried a stamp-duty - a duty so light as to be scarcely perceptible - on the fierce breed of the old Puritans: and we lost an Empire! The Government of Louis the Sixteenth was certainly a much better and milder Government than that of Louis the Fourteenth yet Louis the Fourteenth was admired, and even loved, by his People; Louis the Sixteenth died on the scaffold! Why? Because. though the Government had made many steps in the career of improvement, it had not advanced so rapidly as the Nation. These things are written for our instruction. There is a change in society. There must be a corresponding change in the Government. You may make the change tedious; you may make it violent; you may-God, in his mercy, forbid!- you may make it bloody; but avert it you cannot. Agitations of the public mind, so deep and so long continued as those which we have witnessed, do not end in nothing. In peace, or in convulsion, - by the law, or in spite of the law, through the Parliament, or over the Parliament, Reform must be carried. Therefore, be content to guide that movement which you cannot stop. Fling wide the gates to that force which else will enter through the breach. - 120 REPLY TO THE FOREGOING, DEC. 16, 1831. John Wson Croker HAS the learned gentleman, who has been so eloquent on the necessity of proceeding forward, who has told the House that argument is vain; that there is no resisting the mighty torrent; that there is dire necessity for the whole measure, has he given the slightest intimation of what would be, even in his opinion, the end of the career, the result of the experiment, the issue of the danger? Has he scanned with the eye of a philosopher the probable progress of future events? Not at all. Anything more vague, anything more indefinite, anything more purely declamatory, than the statements of the learned gentleman on that point, has never fallen from human lips. It is true that the learned gentleman has told the House that the town is besieged by superior forces, and has advised them to open the gates of the fortress, lest it should be stormed at the breach. But did he tell them that they could open the gates with safety? without exposing their property to plunder, and their persons to massacre? They were not, under the learned gentleman's advice, to attempt to make any terms; but they were at once to throw open the gates, and await the consequences, however fatal; and submit to the tender mercies of the victors, even though there should be pillage, bloodshed and extermination. The present state of the ream is unparalleled in history. The danger to which the Government is exposed is greater than the Ministers themselves have ever imagined. As the progress of agitation may be tracked through fire and blood, the pusillanimity of Ministers can be also traced through every act of their administration, even those that seemed the boldest. There is no word that they say, no act that they do, no act that they abstain from doing, that is not carefully calculated to offend as little as possible, when they cannot altogether conciliate, the Political Unions, and similar illegal and anarchical associations. Ministers have raised a storm which it is beyond their power, beyond the scope of their minds, to allay. In conclusion, I can assure the House that, in the censures I have passed on His Majesty's Ministers, and in the appalling prospects I have laid before the House, I have urged nothing but what springs from the most imperious sense of the danger of the country; a danger for which I confess that I do not see a remedy, although convinced that there are no means so calculated to aggravate it to a tremendous extent as passing a Reform Bill. 121. PERILS OF PARLIAMENTARY REFORM, MARCH 4, 1831.-John Wilson Croker. SIR, what is to be gained by this change in the Representation? Are we to throw away admitted and substantial benefits, in the pursuit of an undefined, inexplicable, and, to my view, most perilous fantasy? Sir, the learned Lord, after exhausting his eloquence in the praise of the general prospects of the country, turned short round on us, and drew a frightful and metaphorical picture of the present state of the ountry, and the appalling consequences of refusing the concessions which the existing clamor demands. He told you, Sir, that the stormy tides of popular commotion were rising rapidly around us; that the Stygian waters were rapidly gaining upon us, and that it was time for us-and barely time to endeavor to save ourselves from being swallowed up by the devouring waves. He told you that the deluge of public opinion was about to overwhelm you; and he invited you to embark with him on this frail and crazy raft, constructed in the blundering haste of terror, as the only means of escaping from destruction. No, Sir, no! trust not "that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark!" No, Sir! stand firm where you are, and wait until the threatening waters subside. What you hear is not only a fictitious, but a factitious clamor. Be you calm, steady and bold; and the People, under the influence of your wisdom and courage, will recover their wonted judg ment, and become sensible of the value of what they would lose by this scheme, and of the uselessness of what they might gain. Of the Constitution of this country there might, perhaps, have been a better theoretical arrangement; but I do, in my heart, firmly believe that no human ingenuity could, a priori, have conceived so admirable a practical system, promoting, in such nice and just degrees, the wealth, happiness and liberties, of the community at large, "Where jarring interests, reconciled, create The according music of a well-mixed State; Where small and great, where weak and strong, are made 122. EXTENSION OF THE TERM OF COPYRIGHT, 1838.-T. N. Talfourd. THERE is something, Sir, peculiarly unjust in bounding the term of an author's property by his natural life, if he should survive so short a period as twenty-eight years. It denies to age and experience the probable reward it permits to youth to youth, sufficiently full of hope and joy to slight its promises. It gives a bounty to haste, and informs the laborious student, who would wear away his strength to complete some work which "the world will not willingly let die," that the more of his life he devotes to its perfection, the more limited shall be his interest in its fruits. When his works assume their place among the classics of his country, your law declares that those works shall become your property; and you requite him by seizing the patrimony of his children! This bill has for its In the words of Mr. Wordsworth's petition, main object to relieve men of letters from the thraldom of being forced to court the living generation to aid them in rising above slavish taste and degraded prejudice, and to encourage them to rely on their own impulses." Surely this is an object worthy of the Legisla ture of a great People, especially in an age where restless activity and increasing knowledge present temptations to the slight and the superficial which do not exist in a ruder age. Let those who "to beguile the time look like the time" have their fair scope, — let cheap and innocent publications be multiplied as much as you please, still, the character of the age demands something impressed with a nobler labor, and directed to a higher aim. "The immortal mind craves objects that endure." The printers need not fear. There will not be too many candidates for "a bright reversion," which only falls in when the ear shall be deaf to human praise. I have been accused of asking you to legislate "on some sort of sentimental feeling." I deny the charge. The living truth is with us. The spectral phantoms of depopulated printing-houses and shops are the baseless fancies of our opponents. If I were here beseeching indulgence for the frailties and excesses which sometimes attend fine talents, if I were here appealing to your sympathy in behalf of crushed hopes and irregular aspirations, - the accusation would be just. I plead not for the erratic, but for the sage; not for the perishing, but for the eternal: for him who, poet, philosopher or historian, girds himself for some toil lasting as life, lays aside all frivolous pursuits for one virtuous purpose, that, when encouraged by the distant hope of that "ALL-HAIL HEREAFTER " which shall welcome him among the heirs of fame, he may not shudder to think of it as sounding with hollow mockery in the ears of those whom he loves, and waking sullen echoes by the side of a cheerless hearth! For such I ask this boon, and through them for mankind; -—and I ask it with the confidence, in the expression of which your veteran petitioner, Wordsworth, closed his appeal to you, "That in this, as in all other cases, justice is capable of working out its own expediency." 123. REALITY OF LITERARY PROPERTY, 1838.- Id. Ir is, indeed, time that literature should experience some of the blessings of legislation. 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 common law, and the remedies which the common law would 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 proprietor 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. "But," say the opponents of this measure, "we think that, from the moment an author puts his thoughts on paper, and delivers them to the world, his property therein wholly ceases.” What has he invested no capital? embarked no fortune? If human life is nothing in your commercial tables, if the sacrifice of profession, of health, of gain, is nothing, surely the mere outlay of him who has perilled his fortune to instruct mankind may claim some regard! Or is the interest itself so refined, so ethereal, that you cannot regard it as property, because it is not palpable to sense as to feeling? Is there any justice in this? If so, why do you protect moral character as a man's most precious possession, and compensate the party who suffers unjustly in that character by damages? Has this possession any existence half so palpable as the author's right in the printed creation of his brain? I have always thought it one of the proudest triumphs of human law, that it is able to recognize and to guard this breath and finer spirit of moral action; that it can lend its aid in sheltering that invisible property, which exists solely in the admiration and affection of others; and, if it may do this, why may it not protect his interest in those living words, which, as was well observed by that great thinker, Mr. Hazlitt, are, "after all, the only things which last forever"? 124. AN INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.-Id. The IN venturing to invite the attention of the House to the state of the law affecting the property of men of letters in the results of their genius and labors, I would advert to one other consideration as connected with this subject. I would urge the expediency and justice of acknowledging the rights of foreigners to copyright in this country, and of claiming it from them for ourselves in return. great minds of our time have an audience to impress far vaster than it entered into the minds of their predecessors to hope for; an audience increasing as population thickens in the cities of America, and spreads itself out through its diminishing wilds; an audience who speak our language, and who look on our old poets as their own immortal ancestry. And if this, our literature, shall be theirs, if its diffusion shall follow the efforts of the stout heart and sturdy arm, in their triumph over the obstacles of nature, if the woods, stretching beyond their confines, shall be haunted with visions of beauty which our poets have created, let those who thus are softening the ruggedness of young society have some present interest about which affection may gather; and, at least, let them be protected from those who would exhibit them, mangled or corrupted, to their transatlantic disciples. I do not, in truth, ask for literature favor; I do not ask for it charity. I do not even appeal to gratitude in its behalf. But I ask for it a portion, and but a portion, of that common justice which the |
