Whether the proper encouragement of authors requires this to be done, is the point which the two Governments should first settle. Copyright does not exist, except as created by law, for it begins only when the steps are taken which the law prescribes, and it continues only so long as the law extends it. There is, therefore, no natural right involved. A man’s thoughts are his own only so long as he keeps them to himself. When he has uttered them they become the thoughts of all who receive them, and who thenceforth use them at pleasure. The title to a thought by original invention is no better than the title to an asteroid by original discovery. The clothing of a man’s thoughts in language no more entitles him to their exclusive publication, after they are gone forth to the public, than a man’s careful study of the clothing of his person entitles him to forbid the imitation of his garb and gait as he walks the streets. The law creates Copyright on the assumption that the public good will be promoted by the encouragement thus granted to authors to publish their works.... The pecuniary return realised from their publications is neither the only nor the chief encouragement by which authors of merit are induced to publish their works. The good they may do to mankind, the reputation they may acquire, and the satisfaction of seeing their thoughts widely diffused and received, and made a part of the mental wealth of their country and age, outweigh a thousandfold, to an enlarged and generous mind, the value of the material silver and gold yielded by their Copyright. And it cannot be doubted that these higher returns are directly increased by freedom of publication unrestricted by Copyright; because cheapness of price, and variety in the forms of publication, are prime elements in the widest circulation of books.... It is impossible to exaggerate the value of this international exchange of ideas through the medium of books, as a means of that general assimilation of thought and life which is the highest guaranty of political and commercial intercourse and permanent friendship between the two countries. While each nation, for the most part, buries its own literary trash, and each retains the exclusive circulation of books adapted specially to its own use, the whole volume of the best thoughts of one country have now their widest diffusion, through their freedom of publication in the other. The present is a favourable time for the consideration of this important question. The following extract from the editorial columns of the _Bookseller_, of May 1, is confirmatory and encouraging:—