Here is a claim for a far-seeing, statesmanlike policy, based upon principles of wide equity, and planned for the permanent advantage of literature in England and throughout the world. Contrast with this the narrow and local views of the following resolutions adopted at a meeting held in Philadelphia in January, 1872, with reference to international copyright, at which, if I remember rightly, Mr. Henry Carey Baird presided; "I. That thought, unless expressed, is the property of the thinker" (a pretty safe proposition, as, _until_ expressed, it could hardly incur any serious risk of being appropriated); "when given to the world, it is as light, free to all. "II. As property it can only demand the protection of the municipal law of the country to which the thinker is subject." The property which would, if it still existed, most nearly approximate to such a definition as this is that in _slaves_. Twenty years ago, an African chattel who was worth $1000 in Charleston became, on slipping across to the Bermudas, as a piece of property valueless. He had no longer a market price. It is this ephemeral kind of ownership, limited by accidental political boundaries, that our Philadelphia friends are willing to concede to the work of a man's mind, the productions into which have been absorbed the grey matter of his brain and perhaps the best part of his life. "III. The author of any country, by becoming a citizen of this, and assuming and performing the duties thereof, can have the same protection that an American author has." We have already shown what an exceedingly unprotective and unremunerative arrangement it is that is accorded to the American author, and we have yet to find a single one, except perhaps Mr. Carey, who is satisfied with it. Why a European author, who has before him, under international conventions, the markets of his native country and of all the world, excepting belated America, should be expected to give up these for the poor half-loaf of protection accorded to his American brother we can hardly understand. "IV. The trading of privileges to foreign authors for privileges to be granted to Americans is not just, because the interests of others than themselves are sacrificed thereby." That strikes one as a remarkable sentence to come from Philadelphia. Here are a number of American manufacturers who ask for a certain very moderate amount of protection for their productions, and our Philadelphia friends, filled with an unwonted zeal for the welfare of the community at large, say, "No; this won't do. Prices would be higher, and _consumers_ would suffer." It is evident that this want of practical sympathy with these literary manufacturers is not due to any lack of interest in the enlightenment of the community, for the last article says: