Crispin, who stole leather to make shoes for the poor, was none the less a thief, says Wolfgang Menzel, in an article on literary piracy. But Menzel is a German, and it would be alike absurd and unsafe for an eminently practical people, like ourselves, to be governed in regard to our national policy by an eminently philosophical people like the Germans. We are by no means certain that Crispin is not a fellow to be copied: before we pronounce judgment upon him, we must know whether he stole from his own countrymen, or from foreigners. There is a vast difference; a difference as great as the countries may be apart. Nothing can be more evident than the proposition that a nation cannot exist by domestic thievery, for I cannot steal from my neighbor unless my neighbor steal from abroad. Therefore, in considering a theft, nationally, it is of the first importance to know who it is that has been robbed. Like many other acute critics, Menzel has furnished a very potent argument to refute his own doctrines, by reasoning a little too close: the parallel between the shoe-maker who steals his leather for the benefit of the people, and the printer or book-publisher who pirates the contents of a book, is a peculiarly unhappy one for the cause he advocates. Nothing can be more evident, no principle is more strongly interwoven in our policy as a nation, than that of encouraging domestic manufactures. It is very plain that if the material for our books cost us nothing, we can manufacture them more cheaply than a rival nation that is compelled to pay their authors for producing them; it is also equally evident that they can therefore be afforded at a cheaper rate to the people, and that the quantity sold will be in proportion to the lowness of the price, and that the intelligence of the people will be in proportion to the number of books that are read: if, in addition to the contents of our books, we could pirate the leather, paper, types, and ink of which they are composed, we should be the most enlightened and independent people in the world, if we are not so already.

The trade of authorship has always entailed on its professors poverty and disease. The sedentary habits which it induces must of necessity undermine health: the abstraction from the every-day affairs of life, requisite to its successful prosecution, almost always causes insanity, or at least mania; and it is not clear that monomania is not an essential feature of authorship: in fact, the history of authorship is but a record of wretchedness. No other profession has furnished an exclusive chapter of calamities. We never hear of the calamities of merchants, of brick-layers, or cultivators. If then we can save our countrymen from the exercise of a calling so manifestly injurious to their happiness and welfare, by availing ourselves of the labors of foreigners, to whom we owe neither protection nor fealty, what man who wishes well to his country will have the temerity to oppose a practice so conducive to our national prosperity? We have declared ourselves a free and independent people; but could it be said that we were either free or independent, if we were restrained, by self-imposed laws, from making free with the labors of a rival nation, separated from us by an ocean of three thousand miles? or independent, if we were dependent upon ourselves for our intellectual pabulum?

The only independent nation of modern times was the Algerines, now unhappily extinct. They were a model people! They were free and independent, in the most liberal and extended sense. They were dependent upon themselves for nothing which they could take from other nations; and so fully did they carry out their principle of national independence, that they looked to a foreign power to furnish them with their governors. No native of the soil was ever harrassed by the cares of government. All their rulers were imported from abroad.

In respect of mere corporeal rulers, we are as yet far behind the Algerines, but virtually we are in advance of them as respects our governing power. No one will deny that to rule the mind is far better, more honorable, more arduous, and more important, than to rule the body. Our mental rulers are all foreigners; the majority of them pensioners of a government that advocates and inculcates principles directly opposed to those that we profess. They rule us by means of the books that we cunningly pirate from them, and thereby save ourselves a very great amount of trouble and expense. It is true that some of our people are mad enough to attempt to divide this ruling power with these foreigners, by publishing books themselves; but their efforts only prove the correctness of our assertion; for in order to smuggle their works into notice, they are compelled to make them so nearly like those that are printed, that they could not be distinguished from them, were it not for their title-pages. Evidences of these truths abound, on all sides, as well in the Church as the State. Some of our young preachers have improved their opportunities of studying foreign books to that degree, that they have boldly confessed that the great reformation was not only unjustifiable, but a real detriment to the cause of humanity. Others have professed a faith in the fine old conservative doctrine of the divine right of kings; and one young presbyter that we know, has quitted his country, and now officiates as a chaplain in the dominions of her most gracious majesty, Victoria the First. Other blessings equal to these are continually manifested by our rulers and legislators, who give abundant evidence that they have profited by the continual influx of foreign mind. One great statesman, of the Virginia school of politics, a great patriot and a great orator also, profited to such an extent by his foreign books, that he could not even read a work that had been re-printed in this country. But we would not be thought to advocate so sublime and patriotic an extension of the great principle of pirating as this, because it would deprive our artisans and tradesmen of a very profitable business. Perhaps the most remarkable and beneficial effect of our independence of ourselves, is manifested by the clergy, who depend almost entirely upon England for their theology, and thereby become so thoroughly imbued with an independent spirit, that when they happen to be troubled with a thoracic disorder, or any other disease, immediately leave their flocks to the care of the great Head of the Church, and hurry off to Europe to consult foreign physicians, and inhale a mouthful of foreign air.

But the real benefits of the present system of pirating English books, consist in the employment given to capital and labor. Our paper-mills, type-founders, printers, binders, and book-sellers, are kept in constant employment by the intellect of Great Britain. The brain of Walter Scott alone gave employment to a greater number of mechanics and tradesmen than that of any American since the revolution, with the exception of Fulton. It must be borne in mind that the imagination of a foreign author creates for us a source of employment, which but for him would not exist; beside furnishing for us a never-failing source of recreation and profitable enjoyment. Were it not for Scott and Bulwer, Boz and James, we should have no novels to read; were it not for Tom Moore, we should have no songs to sing; and but for foreign composers, we should have no music. Since the successful experiment of ocean navigation, we have become more and more independent of ourselves; and we now have the gratification of seeing London newspapers hawked about our streets, to the very manifest falling off in the manufacture of the home article. If we still remain true to ourselves, and resolutely shut our ears to the complaints of these interested and mercenary writers, both at home and abroad, the time will soon come when our people will be saved entirely from all literary drudgery, and even our newspapers be re-publications of London Times' and Chronicles, as some of our Magazines already are of London and Edinburgh and Dublin monthlies.

How absurd, how impudent, how mercenary and grovelling, it is in these British authors to require of us to pass a law that will deprive ourselves of such great advantages, merely to put a few dollars in their pockets, and encourage a set of men among us to supplant them, and so inculcate a spirit of base and servile self-dependence among our people! The great object of an author should be fame. No true genius will exert himself for filthy lucre. It must be infinitely more grateful to a high nature to be read by thousands, than to be paid by hundreds; and therefore we benefit these foreigners in spite of themselves, by re-printing their works at a cheap rate, thereby greatly enlarging the circle of their readers, and adding to their reputation. It is very true that the British Parliament has passed a law giving to American authors the privilege of copyright as soon as a reciprocal law shall be passed by us; but are we to be dictated to by the British Parliament? Are we to be reminded of our duty by foreigners, who thus make a show of their magnanimity, only to entice us to follow their example? Shall we become mere copyists of another nation? Forbid it Justice! forbid it Independence!

If we concede to the foreign author a right of property in the productions of his brain, which after all is merely the distillation of other people's ideas expressed in some other way before him, or at best the promptings of Nature, which are the common property of mankind, like air and sun-shine, we shall next be called upon to recognize the inherent and indestructible right of an author to his works, for all time.

When a citizen purchases of government a quarter section of land in one of the territories, and pays for it at the rate of a dollar and a quarter the acre, it becomes his own property, and the whole nation would rise up like one man to defend him in the undisturbed possession of it to the end of time. But if this same citizen should devote the flower of his manhood, the vigor of his intellect, and even the land itself which he may have purchased of his country, in the production of a book for the benefit of humanity, he would have no right to the possession of his work but for a very limited number of years; and although he would be protected in the possession of his land, or the products of it, from foreign aggression, we would not allow him any protection in the enjoyment of the product of his brain, even though a foreign nation should civilly agree to respect our law for that purpose if we should think proper to pass one.

The reasons for these distinctions in regard to different kinds of property are so very clear and conclusive, so exceedingly simple and obvious, that we do not choose to insult the understanding of our readers by repeating them. Some of the advocates of an international copy-right have urged in its favor that a measure so just could not be otherwise than politic, and that it would be safe to adopt one, without any regard to expediency, but relying solely upon truth and justness. But such a principle as this is directly at variance with the genius of our constitution and laws; and were it adopted in one case would be urged as a precedent in another, and an entire overthrow of our system of government would be the consequence. Were so mischievous a principle as this once adopted by our legislators as their rule of action, what would become of those noble specimens of eloquence with which we are favored every session of Congress, when members who are perfectly agreed as to the justness of a measure, dispute for weeks and months in regard to its expediency or profit? What would become of our army and navy, and our corps of diplomatists? What would become of many of the peculiar institutions of the North and of the South? In short, how would our representatives contrive to lengthen out a session, or even make a speech for Bunkum, to be read by their constituents?

The subject widens as we write; absurdities throng around our quill, striving to get down to the nib of our pen; and the very fulness of the argument chokes our utterance; we grow fustigatory and impatient to lay about us; but we must conclude in the words with which an ingenious cotemporary a few months since began an essay upon the same subject, namely: 'Copy-right is a humbug.'

'Fulgura Frango.'