1842.] TALFOURD'S EFFORTS TO AMEND THE COPYRIGHT ACT. 463 operation. We therefore do not essentially narrow the range of our view of "the Victorian Era" when we take our stand-point in the sixth year of the queen's reign. Although this view must be incomplete with regard to some popular writers of the more immediate present, it relieves us from the invidious task of making any pretension to estimate the value of new reputations; leaving us to speak chiefly of those whose foremost place in the long file of illustrious contemporaries had been for the most part settled by continuous public opinion in the first decade of the queen's reign. Of these contemporaries we shall consider it most becoming to speak with the brevity of a bibliographer rather than with the elaborate judgment of a critic. In the session of 1842 "an Act to amend the Law of Copyright "-the Act now regulating literary property-was passed, after a struggle that had endured five years. In 1837 Mr. Serjeant Talfourd first drew the attention of the House of Commons to the law of Copyright, as it then existed under the statute of the 54th of George the Third, which gave to the author of a book or his assigns the sole liberty of reprinting such book for the term of twenty-eight years from the date of publication, and if the author should be living at the expiration of that term, for the residue of his natural life. The proposition of Serjeant Talfourd was to extend the term of copyright in a book to sixty years, reckoned from the death of the writer, in addition to its duration during his life. The opposition to this proposal, on every occasion on which it was debated, was of a mixed character. There were legislators who altogether denied the inherent natural right of an author to a property in his labours. These maintained that it was for the public interest that he should labour without reward, or at any rate that he should receive as little as possible in the shape of a money reward, the love of fame being deemed by them amply sufficient to secure to the public an adequate supply of the best books. Others, who did not go quite so far, maintained that the existing term under the Act of George the Third-" an Act to amend the several Acts for the Eucouragement of Learning by securing the Copies and Copyright of printed Books to the Authors of such Books and their Assigns"—was amply sufficient for the remuneration of authors. Others more reasonably opposed Serjeant Talfourd's Bill, upon the ground that the term which he suggested would in many cases give a monopoly for eighty years and even for a hundred years. There was a class of publishers then, as there always will be, who were only debarred by the laws against piracy from reducing to practice the philosophical theory that an author should work for nothing, to make books cheap. One of these kept a very accurate account of the original date of a publication by a living author, and could calculate the chances of his life according to the most trustworthy tables of mortality. There was a worthy citizen and merchant-taylor of London of the days of Queen Elizabeth, who kept a most exact register of the funerals of the great and wealthy in his time. It was in the way of business, for he was a furnisher of funeral trappings." So was it in the way of business that the industrious publisher of Cheapside in the days of Queen Victoria recorded, with Christian satisfaction, the final release of those who, after long battling with fortune, left, * We shall in part supply this deficiency by appending to this chapter a Table supplementary to that before given, pp. 133 to 138. "Diary of Henry Machyn"-Camden Society. 464 MR. CARLYLE'S PETITION-TALFOURD'S BILL REJECTED. [1842. by the expiry of their copyright, no heritable title to the property which they had created. Such encouragers of learning stoutly petitioned against any alteration of the law. There were few petitions for the Bill, but there was one which amused and edified the House of Commons in 1839. Of this remarkable and characteristic document we give a sentence or two: "The petition of Thomas Carlyle, a writer of books, Humbly showeth, That your petitioner has written certain books, being incited thereto by various innocent or laudable considerations, chiefly by the thought that said books might in the end be found to be worth something. That your petitioner does not undertake to say what recompense in money this labour of his may deserve: whether it deserve any recompense in money, or whether money in any quantity could hire him to do the like. That this his labour has found hitherto, in money or money's worth, small recompense or none: that he is by no means sure of its ever finding recompense: but thinks, that, if so, it will be at a distant time, when the labourer will probably no longer be in need of money, and those dear to him will still be in need of it." The various discussions on the Copyright Bill, during five sessions of parliament, brought forward many curious points of literary history. The almost universal range of the learning of Mr. Macaulay had a great effect in inducing the House in 1841 to reject Mr. Serjeant Talfourd's Bill. He argued against the public injury of a monopoly of sixty years that the boon to authors would be a mere nullity, but that considered as an impost upon the public it would be a very serious and pernicious reality. He maintained that there would be the danger that, when an author's copyright should remain for so long a period in the hands of his descendants, many valuable works would be totally suppressed or grievously mutilated. On that occasion Serjeant Talfourd's Bill was rejected by a majority of seven. His longcontinued advocacy of the extension of copyright is held to have been unsuccessful "chiefly through the efforts of Mr. Macaulay who, strange to say, strained every nerve to defeat a measure calculated to give independence to a class of which he himself was so bright an ornament." This judgment upon the conduct of a great writer towards his fellows is more than unkind, coupled with the entire suppression of the fact that in the next session of parliament when "the tardy act of justice was done to literary men," the benefits conferred upon them were greatly increased, not only by the insertion of clauses known to have originated with Mr. Macaulay, but by his proposition for an extension of time more practically beneficial than that proposed by lord Mahon. On the 3rd of March, 1842, his lordship obtained permission to bring in a Bill to amend the law of Copyright, his plan being that the existing term of twenty-eight years should stand-he would make no addition to the term that was certain, but that the copyright should last twenty-five years after the author's death. Mr. Macaulay proposed a different plan. He would make no addition to the uncertain term, but would add fourteen years to the twentyeight years which the law allowed to an author. The illustrations from the history of literature, ancient and modern, foreign and domestic, which Mr. Macaulay brought forward, went to prove that the most valuable works To meet this possible consequence a clause was introduced in the Bill of 1842. + Alison--"History of Europe," chap. xli. 1842.] LORD MAHON'S BILL--MR. MACAULAY'S AMENDMENTS. 465 of an author being generally produced in the maturity of his powers, his proposition would give a longer term of copyright than that of lord Mahon. "To Lear, to Macbeth, to Othello, to the Faery Queen, to Paradise Lost, to Bacon's Novum Organum and De Augmentis, to Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding, to Clarendon's History, to Hume's History, to Gibbon's History, to Smith's Wealth of Nations, to Addison's Spectators, to almost all the great works of Burke, to Clarissa and Sir Charles Grandison, to Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia, and with the single exception of Waverley, to all the novels of sir Walter Scott, I give a longer term of copyright than my noble friend gives. Can he match that list? Does not that list contain what England has produced greatest in many various ways, poetry, philosophy, history, eloquence, wit, skilful portraiture of life and manners ?"* Sir Robert Peel supported the amendment upon the original proposal, but at the same time he "admitted the weight of the argument founded upon the necessity for an author to provide for his family after death, and on this account he should be glad, if possible, to combine the two propositions, and besides the forty-two years of the amendment, to give an author's family a right for seven years after his death." Mr. Macaulay was against this suggestion. The proposition for the term of forty-two years certain was carried by a majority of seventy-nine; that for a further term of seven years commencing at the time of the author's death was carried by a majority of fifty-eight. The extension of term was to apply not only to future publications, but to books previously published in which copyright still subsisted at the time of the passing of the Act. There was an exception, however, in cases of existing copyright to the extension of the term to be enjoyed, when the copyright should belong to a publisher or other person who should have acquired it for other consideration than natural love and affection, in which case it should cease at the expiration of the existing term, unless the extension should have been previously agreed to between the proprietor and the author. The provisions of the Act of 1842 which had reference to an increased and increasing class of literary workscyclopædias, reviews, magazines, or works published in a series of books or parts were of the utmost importance both to the interests of publishers and of authors, which interests, rightly understood, are one and the same. There were no attempts to conceal, on the part of the advocates for the extension of copyright, that one of the objects of that extension was to benefit the family of sir Walter Scott, and to give an assurance to the venerable age of Wordsworth that the advantage to himself or his family in the popularity which had followed his early period of neglect would not suddenly cease. In the House of Lords, lord Campbell, who warmly advocated the Bill, expressed his belief that the copyright of some of the works of the great author of the Waverley novels was about to terminate, and without the assistance of this Bill it was doubtful whether the descendants of that illustrious man could continue to occupy Abbotsford.† The case with regard to Scott's works was this: the copyright in four of his poems. was expired at the passing of the Act-the Lay of the Last Minstrel, pub * "Macaulay's Speeches," p. 255. VOL. VIII. HH |