Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/768

 wild and discordant. All sorts of projects and crotchets were thrust forward on all sorts of pretexts. A lawyer was there to represent the Harpers, who opposed international copyright, but for reasons which he admitted would carry with them the destruction of all copyright. He presented a letter from the publishers for whom he was arguing, in which they said the claims of authors were not to be considered, but only the interests of the people at large. But why the people, having taken the communistic hint, and plundered the authors for their own benefit, might not go through the Franklin Square establishment and help themselves, in the interest of cheap knowledge, was not stated. The idea that there was any principle of right in the matter, which it was the duty of Congress to recognize, seemed to be quite lost sight of. The game of defeating the measure for an author's copyright (which it was feared at first might succeed) consisted in bringing up a great number of rival projects to bewilder the question, and the game succeeded. The committee reported against any congressional action, on the ground that it was not called for by equity, while those who professed to be in favor of the measure could come to no agreement in regard to a plan.

It may be added that, while we made no statement before the committee as to English authors being poorly paid, there was a comparison of the American method of payment by a percentage on the sales, with the English system of giving the author half-profits. The American method was commended and the English declared to be one from which their authors suffered; for, while by the percentage plan the author always gets something if there are any sales, on the English plan he gets nothing unless there are profits. And as, first, on the great mass of books there are no profits, and as, second, the making up of the "cost" is entirely in the hands of the publisher, the authors are liable to be victimized by the policy. In proof of this, and in explanation of how badly the half-profit system works for authors, we read from a pamphlet by James Spedding, an English author, in which the whole thing is exposed. He wrote it as two magazine articles, and could not get them published, because the editors said they should thereby make enemies of the publishers. So Spedding published the papers himself. We, however, made no absurd attempt to get up sympathy for English authors because they may be badly used by some of their publishers at home.

of the questions propounded to us through the columns of the Tribune by the Rev. Dr. Deems we answered in the preceding number of the and postponed, for lack of space, the consideration of the following:

"The professor says that 'Prof. Huxley's antagonists hold that the inflexible order of Nature may be asserted, perhaps, in astronomy, but they deny it in biology.' Will he be good enough to refer me to one of the professor's antagonists who 'holds' that opinion?"

We here made an affirmation concerning a class, and Dr. Deems challenges us to produce a single instance in which it is true, which may be taken as an emphatic way of expressing his disbelief in what we said. Recurrence to the matter satisfies us that, besides being true, the proposition is more broadly true than we affirmed it to be. That the order of Nature is a principle accepted only in part, is a view held, not only by those who are ranked as antagonists of Huxley, but by the great mass of people, including even the largest proportion of scientific men. We have received, from Mr. W. H. Walworth, of Monticello, Iowa, a letter of inquiry that so clearly brings out the