If, within the last few years, a tolerably
popular history of France had been published in England, and cheaply
reprinted here, (as it surely would have been,) we doubt whether Mr.
Godwin would have undertaken his laborious and elaborate work,--or,
if he had, whether he would have readily found a bookseller bold
enough to pay an adequate price for the copyright. And it is to be
remembered that an American publisher gives this preference to an
English over an American book simply because he can get it for
nothing, by defrauding its author of the just reward of his industry
or genius. That an author loses his equitable claim to copyright for
the simple reason that by publication he has put himself in our power
is an argument fit to be used only by one who would make use of a
private letter that had accidentally come into his possession to the
damage of the writer.
The necessity of some kind of equitable arrangement was so strongly
felt by American publishers that a kind of unwritten law gradually
established itself among them. It was tacitly understood, that, when
a publisher had paid an English author for advance sheets, no rival
American edition should be published.
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