purses had been long enough to carry them through the long and unprofitable contests that would certainly be the first effect of such legislation. All the considerations adduced by Mr. Spencer have, of course, equal force with reference to open international publishing, while they may also be included among the arguments in behalf of international copyright. With these views of a veteran writer of books may very properly be associated the opinions of the experienced publisher, Mr. Wm. H. Appleton, who, in a letter to the New York _Times_ in 1872, says: "The first demand of property is for security.... To publish a book in any real sense--that is, not merely to print it, but to make it well and widely known--requires much effort and large expenditure, and these will not be invested in a property which is liable to be destroyed at any moment. Legal protection would thus put an end to evil practices, make property secure, business more legitimate, and give a new vigor to enterprise. Nor can a policy which is unjust to the author, and works viciously in the trade, be the best for the public. The publisher can neither afford to make the book so thoroughly known, nor can he put it at so low a price, as if he could count upon permanent and undisturbed possession of it. Many valuable books are not reprinted at all, and therefere are only to be had at English prices, for the same reason that publishers are cautious about risking their capital in unprotected property." The copy-book motto, "Honesty is the best policy," fails often enough to come true (at least as to material results) in the case of the individual, simply because his life is not always long enough to give an opportunity for all the results of his actions to be arrived at. The community, however, in its longer life, is subject to the full influence of the certain though sometimes slow-working relations of cause to effect, relations which, among other things, bring out the essential connection between economics and ethics, and which show in the long-run the just method to be the wise method. An enlightened self-interest finds out the advantage of equity. If the teaching of history makes anything evident, it is that in the transactions of a nation, honesty _pays_, even in the narrowest and most selfish sense of the term, and nothing but honesty can ever pay. Among the many classes of interests to which this applies international copyright certainly belongs.