Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/435

395 THOMAS TEGG. 395 labourer, will probably be no longer in need of money, and those dear to him will still be in need of it. " That the law does, at least, protect all persons in selling the productions of their labour at what they can get for it, in all market-places, to all lengths of time. Much more than this the law does to many, but so much it does to all, and less than this to none. " That your petitioner cannot discover himself to have done unlawfully in this his said labour of writing books, or to have become criminal, or to have for- feited the law's protection thereby. Contrariwise, your petitioner believes firmly that he is innocent in said labour ; that if he be found in the long-run to have written a genuine, enduring book, his merit therein, and desert towards England and English and other men will be considerable, not easily estimated in money ; that, on the other hand, if his book prove false and ephemeral, he and it will be abolished and forgotten, and no harm done. " That in this manner your petitioner plays no un- fair game against the world : his stake being life itself, (for the penalty is death by starvation), and the world's stake nothing, till it see the die thrown ; so that in every case the world cannot lose. " That in the happy and long-doubtful event of the game's going in his favour, your petitioner sub- mits that the small winnings thereof do belong to him or his, and that no other man has justly either part or lot in them at all, now, henceforth, or for ever. " May it, therefore, please your Honourable House to protect him in said happy and long-doubtful event, and (by passing your Copyright Bill), forbid all Thomas Teggs, and other extraneous persons entirely unconcerned in this adventure of his, to steal from 252