Hartford, Sept. 18.
My Dear Howells:
My plan is this——You are to get Mr. Lowell or & Mr. Longfellow to be the first signers of my copyright petition; you must sign it yourself & get Mr. Whittier to do likewise. Then I’m Holmes will sign —he said he would if he didn’t have to stand at the head.1 Then I’m fixed. I will then put a gentlemanly chap under wages & send him personally to every author of distinction in the country & corral the rest of the [signatures]. Then I’ll have the whole thing lithographed (about a thousand copies) & move upon the President2 & Congress in person, but in the subordinate capacity of a party who is merely the agent of better & wiser men—men whom the country cannot venture to laugh at.
I will ask the President to recommend the thing in his message (& if he should ask me to sit down & frame the paragraph for him I should blush——but still I would frame it.)
Next I would get a prime leader in Congress; I would also see that votes enough to carry the measure were privately secured before the bill was offered. This I would try through my leader & a salaried & my friends there.
And then if Europe chose to go on stealing from us, we would say with noble enthusiasm, “American law-makers do steal—but not from [foreign authors, ] not from foreign authors!”
You see, what I want to drive into the public ‸Congr[e]ssional‸ mind is the simple fact that the moral law is, “Thou shalt not steall”—no matter what Europe may do.
I swear I can’t see any use in robbing European authors for the benefit of American booksellers, anyway.
If we can ever get this thing through Congress, we can try making copyright perpetual, some day. There would be no sort of use in it, since only one book in a hundred millions outlives the present copyright term—no sort of use except that the writer of that one book have his rights—which is something.
If we only had some God in the country’s laws, instead of being in such a sweat to get Him into the Constitution, it would be better all around.
The only man who ever signed my petition with alacrity, & said that the fact that a thing was right was all-sufficient, was Rev. Dr. Bushnell.
I have lost my old petition, but (which was brief)3 but will draft & enclose another—not in the words it ought to be, but in the substance. I want Mr. Lowell to furnish the words (& the ideas too,) if he will do it.
Say—Redpath beseeches me to lecture in Boston in November—telegraphs that Beecher’s & Nast’s withdrawal has put him in the tightest kind of a place. So I guess I’ll do that old “Roughing It” lecture over again in November & repeat it 2 or 3 times in New York while I am at it.4
Can I take a carriage after the lecture & go out & stay with you that night provided you find at that distant time that it will not inconvenience you? Is Aldrich home yet?
With love to you all—
Yrs Ever
S. L. C.
To the Hon. the Senate & House of Representatives in Congress assembled:
Whereas, There being no provision in the Christian code of morals which justifies robbery in retaliation for robbery, but the moral law being simply “Thou shalt not steal,” no matter what thy neighbor does may do—and
Whereas, In violation of this principle the United States has legalized the robbery of foreign authors by American publishers refusing to them the benefit of copyright—&—
Whereas, There being nothing in the Christian code of morals which [justifires ] a man in requiring that another man shall ‸promise to‸ stop stealing from him before he will consent to stop stealing from said other man—
Therefore, We, your petitioners, American authors & artists, do pray your honorable body to grant [unto ] all foreign authors & artists full & free copyright in the United States (upon the same terms which we ourselves enjoy); & that you do this not as an act of grace or charity, but as a ‸their‸ right; & furthermore that you do this without hampering the deed with a ‸any‸ provision requiring a like justice at the hands of foreign governments toward American authors & artists.5 We petition thus, as being the only persons ‸craftsmen‸ in our country legitimately concerned in the matter.
Believeing that the infusing the spirit of God into our laws will be something better than the empty honor of putting His name in the Constitution, we will ever pray, etc.
Signed.
Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary
But although he could have made no end of money by remaining in the
field a couple of years he backed out after he had lectured about
100 times and canceled about $5000 worth of conditional
engagements for the spring. He read a written lecture on
“American Humor,” and illustrated it with
crayon sketches—sometimes in black and sometimes in
colors—on mammoth sheets of drawing-paper. He drew these
sketches in presence of the audience, and astonished both the
profession and the public by his amazing rapidity and skill of
execution. He read well and clearly, but he never could surmount his
dislike of public appearances. His success was the event of the
season. But no offers that have been made since have ever induced
him to reappear as a lecturer. (“Tom Nast. James Redpath
Talks about the Great Caricaturist,” San Francisco Chronicle, 4 Jan 80)
Source text(s):Previous publication:
L6, 536–539; Paine 1912, 254–55, and MTB, 1:552–53, excerpts, letter only; MTL, 1:261–63, letter only; Howells 1928, 1:284–85, enclosure only; MTHL 1:99–102.
Provenance:see Howells Letters in Description of Provenance.
Emendations and textual notes:
signatures • s signatures [corrected miswriting].
foreign authors, • forei | foreign authors, [rewritten for clarity]
justifires • [‘r’ partly formed]
unto • unto | unto [corrected miswriting]
