If the hostility to a law of reciprocal copyright be as deep rooted as is alleged, why has there not been some able argument (raised above sordid considerations, and looking wide and far upon the question in all its vast bearings) expounding to us the grounds on which this professed antagonism is based? When we ask them for a syllogism they give us an assertion. “My dear sir, how can you waste time, perplexing yourself and the public with this barren question! We supply readers with a novel, a good three-volume novel, for a shilling; and as long as we do that they will remain deaf to all your appeals. The _argumentum ad crumenam_, the syllogism of the pocket has, in all ages, carried the sway!” This is the head and front of their declamation, of their invective and their facts. This is _the_ Fact! This boulder (offered in lieu of bread) they beg us of the author-tribe to digest: this is their bulwark, their fortress—no, their burrow rather—into which they skulk at the approach of a poor author, quill in hand, prepared to drive off the game—_feræ naturæ_—that lay waste his preserves and make free in his clover-field. Now of all arguments this of cheapness is most questionable and unsafe. It has a comely and alluring visage, is smooth-spoken and full of promise, but we must have a caution where it may lead us, for it is as full of trick and foul play as a canting quaker; as precarious a foothold as the trap of the scaffold the minute before the check is slipped. Cheap and good are a pleasant partnership: but it does not happen that they always do business together. Taking cheapness as our guide and conductor, we can readily make our way, in imagination, to a publishing shop where the principle is expanded into a pleasing practical illustration. The shop is of course in a cellar, (rent twelve shillings a quarter;) the attendant is a second-hand man cast off from the current population of the upper world into this depository (wages seven shillings a week;) his hat, being still on the cheap tendency, has followed him out of Chatham street in company with a coat rejected of seven owners, the last of whom was a dustman, trowsers to match and boots borrowed of a pauper (cost of the entire outfit five shillings and a penny;) behind a counter that totters to the earth at an expense of five pence or more for repairs, he dispenses the frugal Literature of which he is the genius—the paper being of such an exquisite delicacy and cheapness that a good eye, by glancing through, can read both sides at once; the purchaser plunges down with a sixpence (most economical of small coin) in his pocket, and bears off, in a triumphant apotheosis, four and twenty columns to be read by the light of a tallow twopenny that sputters cheapness as it burns. This is the glory of the age; the crowning honor and triumph of America. Who would have the heart or the hardihood to blur that fair picture of popular knowledge and cheap