How and why is it that foreign editions take the place of our own? Because, undoubtedly, of the difference in the price of the two, caused by the monopoly which in one case remains in the hands of one publisher. Is it not notorious, in fact, that even those of the middle classes who have a love for literature never, with rare exceptions, purchase a Copyright book, and that for the very good reason that they cannot afford it? Their only way of getting a sight of a new publication complete is by obtaining it from a circulating library; and particular passages that they wish to have by them, for the purpose of reference or re-perusal, they get possession of, if they get possession at all, by purchasing them extracted in some of the cheap periodicals which subsist on extracts. The effect of this state of things is now manifesting itself in the condition of our literature, which is becoming more and more the literature of circulating libraries—a heavy mass of light reading. How, indeed, can it be expected that an author will take pains when he knows that all his pains will be of no use; that his history or his travels will only come into the hands of those who will be compelled to rush through them at a certain rate, and return them by a certain hour. “He who runs may read,” under the present system, and none but those who do run. This system has come up under the twenty-eight years’ monopoly. Is it likely to be improved under a law which will secure a monopoly for sixty years certain, and perhaps a hundred? We do not think it is. The advocates of the Bill indeed triumphantly refer us to the recent cheap editions of Copyright authors, as proofs of the—we hardly know what; for what do they prove in their favour? The greater part of the works alluded to—the poems of Southey, the novels and poems of Walter Scott, are works of which the Copyright is on the verge of expiring. The following extract is also from the same volume: