fixed, then also should the profit of the publisher be fixed, but that it is much easier to do the last than to do the first. If so, then, it is competent for the legislature to go a step further. If there is to be a Government officer to issue royalty stamps, there may as well be a Government officer to whom a publisher shall take his printers' bills, and who adding to these the trade allowances, authors' ten per cent royalty, and publishers' ten per cent, commission, shall tell him at what price he may advertise the book. This is the logical issue of the plan; and this is not free trade.
Q. (Sir H. Holland). You will hardly contend that the system of royalty is less in accord with free trade than the existing system of monopoly; you will not carry it so far as that, will you?
A. I do not admit the propriety of the word "monopoly."
Q. Without using the word "monopoly," let me say, than the present system of copyright for a certain term of years?
A. I regard that as just as much coming within the limits of free trade as I hold the possession, or monopoly, of any other kind of property to be consistent with free trade. There are people who call the capitalist a monopolist: many working-men do that. I do not think he is rightly so called; and similarly if it is alleged that the author's claim to the product of his brain-work is a monopoly, I do not admit it to be a monopoly. I regard both the term "free trade" as applied to the unrestrained issue of rival editions and the term "monopoly" as applied to the author's copyright as question-begging terms.
Q. Without saying what opinion I hold upon the point, and avoiding the use of the words "monopoly" and "free trade," I wish to know whether you think it most consistent with the doctrines of political economy that every person should be able, upon payment, to publish a particular book, or that only one person should have it in his power to do so for a certain time?
A. Every person is allowed and perfectly free to publish a book on any subject. An author has no monopoly of a subject. An author writes a novel; another man may write a novel. An author writes a book on geology; another man may write a book on geology. He no more monopolizes the subject than any trader who buys raw material and shapes it into an article of trade is a monopolist. There is more raw material which another man may buy. The only thing that the author claims is, that part of the value of the article which has been given to it by his shaping process; which is what any artisan does. The way in which this position of authors is spoken of as "monopoly" reminds me of the doctrine of Proudhon—"Property is robbery." You may give a stigma to a thing by attaching to it a name not in the least appropriate.
Q. (Mr. Trollope). I understand your objection to a system of royalties to be this, that no possible quota that could be fixed would be a just payment for all works?
