Sixty years since, Great Britain was a wealthy country, abounding in libraries and universities, and giving to the world some of the best, and best paid, writers of the age. At that time the people of this country were but four millions, and they were poor, while unprovided with either books or libraries. Since then they have grown to twenty-six millions, millions of whom have been emigrants, in general arriving here with nothing but the clothing on their backs. These poor men have had every thing to create for themselves--farms, roads, houses, libraries, schools, and colleges; and yet, poor as they have been, they furnish now a demand for the principal products of English mind greater than is found at home. If we can make such a market, why cannot they? If they had such a market, would it not pay their authors to the full extent of their merits? Unquestionably it would; and if they see fit to pursue a system tending to cheapen the services of the laborer in the field, in the workshop, and at the desk, there is no more reason for calling upon the people of this country to make up their deficiencies towards those who contribute to their pleasure or instruction by writing books, than there would be in asking us to aid in supporting the hundreds of thousands of day laborers, their wives and children, whom the same system condemns, unpitied, to the workhouse.
But, it will be asked, is it right that we should read the works of Macaulay, Dickens, and others, without compensation to the authors? In answer, it may be said, that we give them precisely what their own countrymen have given to their Dalton, Davy, Wollaston, Franklin, Parry, and the thousands of others who have furnished the bodies of which books are composed--and more than we ourselves give to the men among us engaged in cultivating science--fame. This, it will be said, is an unsubstantial return; yet Byron deemed it quite sufficient when he first saw an American edition of his works, coming, as it seemed to him, "from posterity." Miss Bremer found no small reward for her labors in knowing the high regard in which she was held; and it was no small payment when, even in the wilds of the West, she met with numerous persons who would gladly have her travel free of charge, because of the delight she had afforded them. Miss Carlen tells her readers that "of one triumph" she was proud. "It was," she says, "when I held in my hand, for the first time, one of my works, translated and published in America. My eyes filled with tears. The bright dreams of youth again passed before me. Ye Americans had planted the seed, and ye also approved of the fruit!" This is the feeling of a writer that cultivates literature with some object in view other than mere profit. It differs entirely from that of English authors, because in England, more than in any other country, book-making is a trade, carried on exclusively with a view to profit; and hence it is that the character of English books so much declines.