At the New York dinner Dickens advanced the same subject in a few words. “I claim that justice be done; and I prefer the claim as one who has a right to speak and be heard,” the _Evening Post_ quoted him. He breakfasted with Bryant and Halleck, and was entertained at the poet’s home, where he probably spoke to him in private and received assurances of the _Post’s_ support. On May 9 there appeared a letter from Dickens “To the Editor of the _Evening Post_,” dated April 30 at Niagara Falls, in which he repeated his appeal. With it he enclosed a short letter from Carlyle, wherein the Scotchman thanked him because “We learn by the newspapers that you everywhere in America stir up the question of international copyright, and thereby awaken huge dissonance where else all were triumphant unison for you.” He also enclosed a much longer address “To the American People,” signed by Bulwer, Campbell, Tennyson, Talfourd, Hood, Leigh Hunt, Hallam, Sydney Smith, Rogers, Forster, and Barry Cornwall. This eminent group pointed out that the lack of an international copyright agreement was a serious injury to American authors, who had to compete on unfair terms with the British; and it argued that the supply of standard English books in a cheap form would not really be diminished by such copyright legislation. Books were sold at a high or low price not because they were copyrighted or uncopyrighted, but in proportion as they obtained few or many readers; and the educational system of the United States guaranteed a large reading public. Bryant reinforced these letters with an editorial, remarkable as an expression of confidence in the brilliant future of American letters. It was a mistake, he maintained, to suppose that in the absence of an international copyright agreement the United States had wholly the best of the situation: