INTERNATIONAL IN AMERICA 347
interests of the people." A counter-memorial from Philadelphia objected that international copyright "would prevent the adaptation of English books to American wants." No result came from these peti- tions, nor from one presented in 1848 by William CuUen Bryant, John Jay, George P. Putnam, and others.
In 1 852 a petition for International copyright, signed Everett by Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper and treaty, 1853 others, was presented to Congress; and in 1853 Ed- ward Everett, then Secretary of State, negotiated through the American Minister in London, John F. Crampton, a treaty providing simply that authors entitled to copyright in one country should be entitled to it in the other, on the same conditions and for the same term. This treaty was laid before the Senate in a message from President Fillmore, February 18, 1853. The Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate, through Charles Sumner, reported the Everett treaty favorably, but it was tabled in Committee of the Whole. Five New York publishers addressed a letter to Mr. Everett, sup- porting a convention, providing the work should be registered in the United States before publication abroad, issued here within thirty days after pub- lication abroad, and wholly manufactured in this country. It was in this year that Henry C. Carey published his famous "Letters on international copyright," in which he held that ideas are the common property of society, and that copyright is therefore indefensible. Several remonstrances were also presented against the treaty from citizens of dif- ferent states. The next year the amendatory article to the Everett treaty was laid before the Senate in a message from President Pierce of February 23, 1854, but no action resulted.
