The present opportunity is availed of to recommend to notice the royalty form of International Copyright as one which might probably be acceptable to the people of the United States. I apprehend there is little or no prospect of their agreeing to negotiate on the basis of the monopoly form of Copyright which is now established in both countries. This has often, but never successfully, been urged on the United States. The advantages to British authors and publishers of so large an extension of area are obvious. There are now in that country near forty millions of people much more able to read and to buy than our thirty millions. It is in the interests of British authors, publishers, and traders, most desirable to get so large an addition to the number of the readers and buyers of English literature. Every year the benefit will be greater, but perhaps less easily attainable. The conscience and generous impulses of the great American nation will naturally incline them to negotiate on a principle which (as I hope they will consider that of royalties does) at once fairly meets the reasonable claims of authors and the equally reasonable claims, or rights, of the public. Authors and the trade would soon become familiar with, and reconciled to, the change in the form of their remuneration. They cannot but admit and feel that it is the duty of statesmen, when constituting Copyright, to take care that its effect is on the whole beneficial—as beneficial as is consistent with fair treatment of authors—to the whole body of the people for whose sake they govern. If I am warranted in anticipating that, whereas now under monopoly a new book of intrinsic value is seldom or almost never possessed by, or even seen in the houses of, the labouring population, there would under royalties be a tendency to cheapness which might be confidently relied on as the means of bringing such works within reach of the masses—not when they are stale, but when they are fresh—can I doubt that the concurrence both of authors and legislators is a matter of hope approaching to certainty? When staleness is suggested as a deterrent from, and freshness as a pleasant stimulus to, the reading of books, this is no more than the practical recognition of a taste universal among men and women, whether it concerns food material or food intellectual. Let us work it for the good of our race. But it is a quality and power unattainable except either by royalties or else by the Chinese system of open literature. That the present system works unsatisfactorily, even in a mere trade point of view, I am convinced, and for confirmation refer to figures I append from a Return on the Book Trade lately laid before the House of Commons. The sale of books at home and the export of books to the colonies and foreign parts, admit of vast expansion. We should legislate so as to accomplish, in regard to books, at the least such an expansion as has been attained in regard to newspapers.