We believe that a
majority of the large publishing houses of the country have been
gradually convinced of the inconveniences of the present want of
system. Many of them have found it profitable to enter into an
agreement with popular English authors for the payment of copyright,
and works thus reprinted cost the buyer no more than under the
privateering policy. But without some definite establishment of legal
rights and remedies, the publisher is at the mercy of a dishonorable,
sometimes of a vindictive competition, and must run the risk of
having the market flooded within a week with a cheaper and inferior
edition, reprinted from the sheets of his own which had been
honorably paid for. We do not pretend to argue the question of
literary property, the principle of it being admitted in the fact
that we have any copyright-laws at all. Our wish is to show, that, in
the present absence of settled law, the honest publisher is subjected
to risks from the resultant evils of which the whole reading
community suffers. The publisher, to protect himself, is forced to
make his reprint as cheaply as possible, and to hurry it through the
press with the disregard of accuracy inseparable from hasty
publication,--while the reader is put in possession of a book
destructive of eyesight, crowded with blunders, and unsightly in
appearance.
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