American authors whose copyrights have proved of any material value to English publishers; and even of that few, the majority have retired for some years past, almost wholly from the field of literature. Washington Irving, Cooper, and Prescott, are almost the only authors who have a marketable value in this country; and two out of the three have written little that is worthy of their genius for many years. Besides, the American buccaneer knows full well that the chief weight of the sacrifice, if American copyrights were to be declared null and void in this country, would fall upon neither Mr. Irving, Mr. Cooper, nor Mr. Prescott, but upon Messrs. Murray and Bentley, the British possessors of their copyrights. If, therefore, the question be mooted at all, it should not be with a view to a retrospective operation. But we more than doubt, if America, uninfluenced by worthier motives, will ever be driven to a recognition of the rights of British authors, for the sake of protecting the interests of the very few of its native writers who look to England for the chief reward of their literary labor. America, in her rage for cheap editions, has almost annihilated her own literature, and her unwarrantable piracy of our best authors, does but react on those of her own. If unable to understand the impolicy of her present course, will mulcting Mr. Murray and Mr. Bentley induce her to abandon her wholesale appropriations of English literary property? or, will our becoming robbers ourselves diminish the wholesale piracy of our neighbors? We think not. The arguments of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, which apply to the conduct of America in refusing to entertain the question of international copyright, are unanswerable; but if she prefers the selfish demands of the million to the interests of her own writers, she is not likely to be deterred from continuing the work of spoliation because we, at length, determine to follow her example. It cannot be doubted, for one moment, that it was the _intention_ of the act at present in force, to recognize the copyright of foreigners whose works were first published in this country, and it is equally clear that the law for the protection of the patents of foreigners in England, was conceived in the same spirit. Why should we refuse protection to the writings of a foreign author, and concede it to his scientific discoveries? If we are to interpret the law as Sir E. Bulwer Lytton and Mr. Bohn would have us do, why should we grant to any foreign inventor the patent by which his property is secured in this country? More than twenty years ago the late Mr. Murray paid Washington Irving 1500_l._ for his Tales of a Traveller; 3000_l._ for his Columbus; 1000_l._, for his Granada; and 1000_l._ for his Bracebridge Hall. Is it to be endured, that because American booksellers are engaged in an unauthorized republication of every English book which they consider worth reprinting, we should, after so long a forbearance, become pirates in our