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MACAULAY'S
PEECHES ON COPYRIGHT
LINCOLN'S
COOPER INSTITUTE ^DRES
LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS
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COPYRIGHT DKPOSrr.
LONGMANS' ENGLISH CLASSICS
EDITED BY
ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE, Ph.D., L.H.D.
PBOFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
MACAULAY'S
SPEECHES ON COPYRIGHT
LINCOLN'S
COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
.MACAULAY'S
SPEECHES ON COPYRIGHT
LINCOLN'S
COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
EDITED
WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES
BY
DUDLEY H. MILES, Ph.D.
CHAIRMAN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH IN THE EVANDER CHILDS
HIGH SCHOOL, NEW YORK
LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO.
FOURTH AVENUE AND 30th STREET, NEW YORK
PRAIRIE AVENUE AND 25th STREET, CHICAGO
1915
y<^\^^'^
3 , .
Copyright, 1915
BY
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
OCT -41915
©CI.A4H771
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction to Macaulay's Speeches on Copyright:
I. Life of Macaulay vii
II. The Meaning and History of Copyright xii
III. The Debates of 1841 and 1842 xv
Bibliographical Note on Macaulay xxi
Chronological Table xxiii
Introduction to Lincoln's Cooper Institute Address:
I. Life of Lincoln xxviii
XL Lincohi and Slavery xxxiii
III. The Cooper Institute Address xxxviii
Bibliographical Note on Lincoln xliv
Chronological Table xlvii
Macaulay's First Speech on Copyright 1
Macaulay's Second Speech on Copyright 23
Lincoln's Cooper Institute Address 33
Questions and Topics for Study:
The Speeches on Copyright 61
The Cooper Institute Address 69
Notes 81
V
INTRODUCTION
MACAULAY'S SPEECHES ON COPYRIGHT
I. Life of Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay's prosperous life
began on October 25, 1800, at Rothley Temple, Lei-
cestershire, where his mother was paying a visit to
her sister. His childhood was spent in the heart
of London and in the pleasant suburb of Clapham.
His father was so much engrossed in the anti- slavery
agitation that he had little time to spend on the train-
ing of his eldest son. His mother, how^ever, did not
spoil the child. Though he crept unwillingly to
school, she would hear none of his entreaties to remain
home on rainy afternoons, saying stoically, " No,
Tom, if it rains cats and dogs, you shall go." He
learned without effort, but what he was really inter-
ested in was writing long epics or an epitome of uni-
versal history — childhood works which were as correct
in spelling and grammar, as accurate in punctuation,
and as clear in meaning as his mature masterpieces.
At twelve he was sent to a small private school
near the great university of Cambridge. He was
very homesick, but occupied his whole time with
books and the debating society. Of it he early wrote
that the subject chosen for the next discussion was
*' whether Lord Wellington or Marlborough was the
greatest general. A w^arm debate is expected.'^ In
these discussions little Macaulay seems to have at-
tracted attention by the loudness and fervor of his
viii INTRODUCTION
tones, for his father wrote praying '' that the orna-
ment of a meek and quiet spirit may be substituted
for vehemence and self-confidence/'
At Trinity College, Cambridge, which he entered
at eighteen, he soon became one of the bright partic-
ular lights in the famous debating society, the Cam-
bridge Union. He shone equally in conversation in
the rooms of fellow-students, where on all current
questions he usually maintained the opposite view
with boaniless illustration and argument. His bril-
liancy gave ris3 to the story of a day spent at the coun-
try house of ths Marquis of Lansdowne. There he
and his friend Austin were entertained at a gathering
of ladi33, artists and politicians. The two students
cotnni3nced a conversation at breakfast which was
kept up, with only slight interruption at lunch, until
the bell rang for dinner, yet to Vv^hich every one in
the house was a listener. At his father's home in
Glapham, too, he mingled in the discussions of political
subjects led by some of the most influential members
of parliament who lived on the Surrey side of London.
He thus early gained a thorough schooling in the dis-
cussion of questions of public policy. Moreover,
his student controversies gradually brought him to
the conviction that the Whig party embraced within
its principles all that was wise and just. Though he
detested mathematics, he was on a third trial granted
a fellowship in 1S24 and an A.M. in July of the next
year.
During his school life he took not the least interest
in any athletic sports. He was no less indifferent to
skating, shooting, riding, driving, than to swimming,
rowing, or cricket. Indeed, his only exercise during
his whole life was walking. Yet even on the most
crowded streets of London he would thread his way
at a rapid pace with a book in his hand, reading
INTRODUCTION ix
faster than any one else could sitting clown. The
secret of his great attainments lay in an unerring
memory and the ability to take in at a glance the
contents of a printed page. As a child he memorized
^' The Lay of the Last Minstrel '' at a single reading-
while he and his father were making a call. On re-
turning home he sat down on the bed and repeated as
much of it to his mother as she would hear. In
mature life he says of a trip to Ireland while he was
writing his '^ History/' when one would suppose that
his thoughts would have been absor]:)ed with the
momentous events he was preparing to describe:
'^ As I could not read, I used an excellent substitute
for reading. I went through ' Paradise Lost ' in
my head." He seems never to have spent an hour
in meditation, but as we shall see in his speeches his
vast memory at once supplied him with a whole arsenal
of arguments and illustrations for any occasion.
His father wished him to become a lawyer on leav-
ing Cambridge, and he did study sufficiently to secure
admission to the bar in 1826. But while in college
he had contributed to '^ Knight's Monthly Magazine."
Jeffrey, the famous editor of the '^ Edinburgh Review,"
the foremost magazine of the time and a Whig organ,
invited him to contribute to his pages. Hardly had
he left Cambridge when his '' Essay on Milton "
appeared. He became famous in a day. His break-
fast table was covered each morning with cards
of invitation to dinner from every quarter of London.
For the next twenty years he could not release himself
from the demand for his writings in the ^^ Review."
The publishers at a later date told him that five
hundred book-sellers in different parts of the kingdom
reported that the ^' Review " sold or did not sell
according as there were or were not articles by Mr.
Macaulay.
X INTRODUCTION
In 1S2<S he was on account of his writings made a
commissioner of bankruptcy at a handsome salary.
In 1S30, as a result of some articles on James Mill,
he was asked b}^ Lord Lansdowne to enter parliament
from the vacant borough of Calne. He had, to be
sure, attracted attention even before leaving college
by a speech at a meeting of the Anti-slavery Society.
The " Edinburgh Review " pronounced it " a dis-
play of eloquence so signal for rare and matured
excellence that the most practiced orator may well
admire how it should have come from one who then
for the first time addressed a pul)lic assembly." In
his maiden speech in parliament he spoke so clearly
on the bill for the removal of political disabilities
from the Jews that Sir James Mackintosh declared
that he arose, not " to supply any defects in the speech
of his honorable friend, but principally to absolve his
own conscience." After Macaulay's speech on the
reform bill in 1831 the Speaker sent for him and told
him that in all his prolonged experience he had never
seen the House in such a state of excitement. He was
compared to Burke, Fox, and other great orators of
the past. Of his speech on the second reading of the
bill in 1832 Jeffrey said that it put him clearly at
the head of the great speakers if not the debaters of
the House.
There is another side to his parliamentary career
which is even more creditable. Shortly after he
entered he voted for a bill which swept away his bank-
ruptcy commissionership when he could ill afford to
lose the income. Indeed, he had to sell the gold
medals which he had won at Cambridge to keep out
of debt. For he now had not only to support himself
but to mend the broken fortunes of his family. To
the electors of Leeds in 1832, from whom he was
seeking a seat in parliament, he wrote: " I w^as per-
INTRODUCTION xi
fectly aware that the avowal of my feelings on the
subject of pledges was not likely to advance my
interest at Leeds. ... It is not necessary to my
happiness that I should sit in Parliament; but it is
necessary to my happiness that I should possess, in
Parliament or out of Parliament, the consciousness of
having done what was right.'' In 1833 he again
lived up to his convictions by opposing a govern-
ment measure on West India slavery, although doing
so might have cost him his position in parliament
and blasted his prospects for a public career.
Fortunately, he retained both honor and position.
As secretary of the Board of Control of the East India
Company his speeches had a great deal to do with
the adoption of the plan for reorganizing that company.
His mastery of the subject led to his appointment as
one of the members of the Supreme Council to govern
India, at a salary of ten thousand pounds a year.
Once in Calcutta he plunged into his official duties
and also undertook the chairmanship of two com-
mittees. Pie reorganized the educational system of
India and had much to do with drawing up the Penal
Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Returning to England after an absence of over
four years with the fortune of himself and his family
reestablished, he was in lvS39 elected to parliament
from Edinburgh, and entered the cabinet as Secretary
of War. But his parliamentary triumphs came in
the debates on the copyright bills in 1841 and 1842,
when, as Gladstone says, '^ he arrested the success-
ful progress of legislative measures, and slew them
at a moment's notice, and by his single arm." With
the publication of the '^ Lays of Ancient Rome " in
1842, he added great popularity as a poet to his fame
as essayist and speaker. We need not linger over the
remainder of his parliamentary career. He lost his
xii INTRODUCTION
seat in 1S47, but was returned in 1852 without a can-
vass and remained for four years.
After his return from India his ambition was to
write the '' History of England " which is his surest
title to fame. AVhen the first two volumes appeared
in 1848 they created a greater stir than had been
produced by any other historical book published in
that century. He lived to complete live volumes,
dealing with the fifteen years following the Revolu-
tion of 1688. After an attack of heart-disease in
1852 he contracted a confirmed asthma. The tv/o
ailments kept him from working with any ease during
the remainder of his life, but he nevertheless con-
tinued to prepare the chapters with the same scrupu-
lous care which had assured the popular success of
the first volumes. While sitting *n his chair by the
fireside he died December 28, 1859. He was buried
January 9, 1860, in Poets' Corner in Westminster
Abbey.
II. The Meaning and History of Copyright
If you will look on the page opposite the Table of
Contents, you will find the following notice: " Copy-
right, 1915, by Longmans, Green, and Company."
What does that mean? Simply this, that the pub-
lishers have the sole right to print and publish this
book for twenty-eight years, and if at the expiration
of that term they so wish, for an additional term of
twent3^-eight years. Such is the provision of the
United States law passed in 1909.
What interest have you in such a right? You
have the same interest that every buyer of books
has, for the law helps to determine how much you shall
pay for each copy. Of course the publishers go to
considerable expense to place a book in your hands.
INTRODUCTION xiii
They have to pay for the paper and the printing and
the binding, the advertising and the office and general
expenses connected with offering the volume to the
public,, and provide for the payment of the author.
It is necessary, therefore, that the copyright owner,
whether he be publisher or author, shall be secured
for a certain time against unauthorized reproduction
of a published book. The copyright laws provide
such security.
Exactly what copyright means is a little harder to
explain. But it does seem clear that you have as
much right to what flows from your own mind as to
what you form with your hands. If you whittle out
the hull of a boat or make a new model for an aero-
plane, you surely have the right to keep it. If you
write a letter to a friend, he has no right to print
it in a periodical or a book without first obtaining your
permission. In other words, you have not only a
right to the product of your own mind, but you alone
have the privilege of reproducing it or multiplying
copies. The whole history of copyright controversy
centers about the question, for how long shall you have
this privilege?
This question was not considered in the first copy-
right case, recorded in the dim legendary history
of Ireland. St. Columba, while yet a student and
before he became saintly, secretly made a copy of a
psalter in the possession of his teacher, Finian. But
in 567 A.D. this copy was reclaimed, according to
tradition, by the decision of King Dermott in the Halls
of Tara: " To every cow her calf." It was not until
the invention of printing that either copyright or
its duration became of any importance. The second
Royal Printer was given, in 1518, the exclusive priv-
ilege for two years of printing a certain speech, to
which this first copyright notice was appended.
XIV INTRODUCTION
Most other privileges were for a term of seven years.
During tlie reign of Elizabeth the term of copyright
received its greatest extension. The Stationers' Com-
pany came to prohibit all printing in England except
by tliose registered in its membership, but it was under-
stood that such persons should enjoy the privilege
forever. The turmoil of the Civil Wars affected pub-
lishing almost as much as it did religion and politics.
It was under the law of 1662 that Milton secured the
license for publishing '' Paradise Lost." He lived
to receive ten pounds from the publisher, Samuel
Symmons, who in 1680 secured the perpetual copy-
right from the widow of Milton for eight pounds. Mac-
aulay speaks on pages 14-15 of the operation of this
act. Charles II. renewed the charter of the Stationers'
Company in 1684, confirming to proprietors of books
'^ the sole right, power, and privilege and authority
of printing, as has been usual heretofore."
The ownership of copyright and the length of time
it should run remained, however, in a chaotic state
until the foundation of copyright in England and the
United States to-day was laid by the famous law of
Queen Anne that went into effect in 1710. It gave
the author the sole right of printing for fourteen
years and no longer, unless he at the end of that
term secured the extension for another fourteen
years. There was disagreement about the opera-
tion of the law until a decision of the House of Lords
in 1774 held that the statute of Anne took away the
right of perpetual copyright. The only change up
to the debates included in this volume was the ex-
tension of the term in 1814 to twenty-eight years and
the remainder of the author's life. In 1842, as we
shall see, Macaulay secured the passage of an act ex-
tending the term to forty-two years, or to the life of
the author plus seven years. This remained the law
INTRODUCTION xv
of England until 1912, when the present law went
into force, securing the right to the author for his life-
time and fifty years more.
III. The Debates of 1841 and 1842
The superiority of Macaulay's speeches on copy-
right cannot be seen or measured unless we run over
the debate in which they were delivered. In 1837
Thomas Noon Talfourd introduced a bill to amend
the law by extending the term during which copyright
should be valid. He had from his early twenties
been intimate with Lamb, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
and other literary men. His speech on that bill
gained him great applause, but the bill itself was
opposed b}^ most of the classes concerned; that is,
by authors, publishers, and readers. Five successive
times he introduced a measure, with the same want of
success in parliament but with growing favor outside.
On January 27, 1841, he again asked leave to bring in
a bill which would secure copyright for a period of
fifty years reckoned from the author's death. Mr.
Warburton, who represented medical interests in
legislation, was on his feet at once. He declared that
^' he did not intend to let even a stage of the bill pass
without offering to it his most strenuous and deter-
mined opposition." These stages were five: (1)
leave to bring in the bill, when there was usually
little or no debate; (2) the first reading; if favored,
the bill was ordered to be printed and a date set for
the second reading; (3) a second reading, when the
principle of the measure was discussed; if it was then
voted dowm, it could not be considered again during
that session; (4) consideration in a committee
of the whole house or by a special committee, when
details and amendments were discussed; when the
xvi INTRODUCTION
committee reported, a day was set for the third read-
ing; (5) a third reading; if the bill then passed,
it was sent to the House of Lords.
When leave to bring in the bill was discussed on
January 29, Mr. Warburton launched forth into a
long speech against it. He could not agree that the
question was one of natural right to the productions
of one's own mind. He did not acknowledge such
a thing as natural rights. The question was merely
one of expediency. He would consequently consider
the interests of authors, of publishers, and of the pub-
lic. With regard to authors the proposed law amounted
to perpetual copyright. It would therefore injure
authors because it would make easier the suppression
and mutilation of their works, and would even enable
the descendants of authors to prevent the public
from reading the works of genius. Publishers would
not be benefited because they testified that current
works remained in circulation only from fourteen
to twenty years. The public would suffer because the
monopoly created would raise the price of books.
In spite of his opposition leave was given by a vote
of 142 to 30 to bring in the bill and read it a first
time. Apparently Serjeant Talfourd was at length
to win his fight.
On February 5 the bill came up for a second reading.
In presenting it Serjeant Talfourd requested that even
those who favored a thirty-year extension, the term
in France, should vote for the second reading. He
denied that he had overlooked the question of ex-
pediency. Following the plan of Mr. Warburton's
speech, he declared that the greatest authors of the
time favored his bill, that the publishers, with one or
two exceptions, were quite satisfied with the pro-
visions of the bill, and that the public should first
of all learn justice. He added that the same argu-
INTRODUCTION xvii
ments (that books would become dearer, that fewer
would be written, fewer published, fewer sold) were
used when in 1814 the term of copyright was extended
from fourteen to twenty-eight years. His measure
was necessary because (1) only in this way could
authors be given the means of preserving the purity
of their works and (2) it would overcome the tend-
ency of the time to purchase works of light and airy
character and would encourage that which was slow
in production, high in aim, and lasting in duration.
It was to this appeal that Macaulay replied in
what the London " Times " the next day called a
" long and clever speech against it " — his " First
Speech on Copyright." The repeated applause with
which he was greeted showed how telling his points
were. To his argument Sir R. H. Inglis, an old-
fashioned Tory, replied that the bill had no refer-
ence to the origin of the right of property, but was
founded on expediency, and that all Macaulay^s argu-
ments against the proposed bill applied just as
much to the present law. Mr. Serjeant Talfourd
added that Macaulay's doctrine concerning property
in works might be equally urged against all works,
that the argument concerning the suppression of books
might be applied to the present twenty-eight year
period. He pointed out that Macaulay had not
grappled with the great examples adduced in favor
of the bill, as Wordsworth, Rogers, and Campbell.
He denied that experience had shown that monopoly
had increased the price of books.
The vote was taken by having those who favored
the bill pass into one lobby, while those opposed passed
into another. The tellers reported a majority of seven
against the further consideration of the measure.
Thus Macaulay by a single speech turned the tide
against a measure that gave promise of success.
xviii INTRODUCTION
His second speech was delivered against a bill to
extend the term of copyright to twenty-five years after
the author's death. This was introduced on March 3,
1842, by Lord Mahon because Serjeant Talfourd was
no longer in parliament. It passed by agreement
through the first and second reading and was taken up
on x\pril 6th by the House sitting as a committee of the
whole. Lord Mahon made a long, clear, but not strik-
ingly eloquent speech, a brief for which is given on
p. 66. Macaulay delivered in reply his '' Second Speech
on Copyright," arguing for a term of forty-two years
from the date of publication. Sir R. H. Inglis again
replied in the genial manner that had made him
exceedingly popular in the House of Commons. He
declared that no one could expect him, nor would
he for a moment attempt, to follow the learned and
eloquent speech, one full of so much research as that
just delivered — indeed, during his whole life he had
never known any person able to follow such a speech
but one. He asserted, however, that Macaulay had
overlooked one very prominent object of the bill —
to allow dying authors to provide for their families.
Besides, his cases had not, with one exception, been
taken from the authors of the day. There were three
illustrious living authors, Wordsworth, Campbell,
and Southey, who would derive a greater advantage
from Lord Mahon's bill than from Macaulay's plan.
This he proved by reference to particular works and
dates.
It was Mr. Thomas Wakley who represented this
year the opposition of medicine and science to any
favors to letters and art. He had founded the famous
medical journal, '' The Lancet," and had effected many
reforms in hospital service and in surgery, but on
the present occasion he displayed merely narrow
prejudice. In the course of his attack he declared
INTRODUCTION xix
that the purpose of the bill was to give piotection
by statute to literary quacks, illustrating his point
by reading and holding up to ridicule some poems by
the great poet Wordsworth. When questioned he
replied that he could write " respectable " poetry
by the mile. " Punch " ridiculed him at once, and
later the humorist Thomas Hood belabored him with
genial satire.
Mr. Monckton Milnes, famous for his social rela-
tions with authors, declared that Macaulay's plan
would be little better than the existing law, since it
afforded no protection to the author's family. He
illustrated the action of the proposed amendment by
discussing Southey's case at the time.
The first and second clauses of the bill, which
did not affect the term of copyright, passed; but there
was further debate on the third, which read as follows :
''And be it enacted that the copyright in every book
which shall, after the passing of this act, be published
in the lifetime of its author, shall endure for the
natural life of such author, and for the further term
of twenty-five years, commencing at the time of his
death, and shall be the property of such author and
his assigns: provided always that in no case shall
the whole term be less than twenty-eight years."
Sir Robert Peel, the great Tory prime minister at
the time, remarked that he had always doubted the
advisability of altering the law. He was now won
over by Macaulay's arguments to favor the certain
term of forty-two years, but he would like to add a
period of seven years from the author's death. The
wealthy bachelor Macaulay felt that such a provision
would make literary men too inconsiderate of the
future. When Lord John Russell, the famous Whig
leader who had pushed through the Reform Bill of
1832, asked for an acceptance of the seven-year addi-
XX INTRODUCTION
tion, Macaulay called for a division. The first vote
was on the question whether the words, " and for the
further term of twenty-five years commencing at the
time of his death " should stand as part of the law.
After a division it was found that the words were
stricken out by a majority of twelve. The second
vote was on whether the words '^ and for the further
term of seven years commencing at the time of the
author's death " be inserted. This was carried by a
majority of fifty-eight. The third vote was on whether
th3 words ''twenty-eight years'' should stand as a
part of the clause. They were stricken out by a
majority of seventy-nine. The whole clause as
amended, with the words forty-two years inserted in
place of " twenty-eight years," was then adopted
by the same majority. The results of the voting
were:
1. Copyright should continue for the lifetime of
an author and for the further term of seven years
commencing at the time of his death.
2. Copyright should in no case continue for a
shorter period than forty-two years after the date of
publication.
The law was therefore essentiall}^ the one that
Macaulay proposed. A weakness of his plan pointed
out by Sir R. H. Inglis and made more apparent as
the discussion advanced, was remedied by the seven-
year clause, but in general it was his scheme which
governed the duration of copyright for the next
seventy years. It is not often that a debater wins
so conspicuous a personal triumph.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON MACAULAY
The best biography of Macaulay is by all odds
'^ The Life and Letters of Lord Macaula}^/' b^ Sir
George Otto Trevelyan, originally issued in 1876.
A very entertaining life it is. A much shorter one
was written for the English Men of Letters Series
by J. Cotter Morison. It not only gives a good brief
account of his life but includes a criticism of his
writings.
For the student of Macaulay's oratory there are
various editions of his speeches. They were collected
into one volume, with his " Miscellaneous Writings ''
many years ago and may now be had in a cheap
edition at $1.00 (Longmans). The whole of the
debates on copyright is recorded in Hansard's '' Par-
liamentary Debates " for the years 1841 and 1842.
Those interested in copyright will find the most
complete account in Richard Rogers Bowker's " Copy-
right, its History and its Law.'' (Houghton Mifflin
Compam^ 1912.) It is sl " summary of the prin-
ciples and practice of cop^aight with special reference
to the American code of 1909 and the British act of
1911." But as a matter of fact it treats of all kinds
of copyright in every country, and gives the laws,
the regulations for securing both the right and damages
for infringement. There is an English w^ork by
George Stuart Robertson, " The Law of Copyright "
published by the Clarendon Press (1912) which
explains fully the British law of 1911 and kindred
matters. If you have not access to these, you may
find interesting matter in some books now out of date :
xxi
xxii BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON MACAULAY
George Haven Putnam's " The Question of Copy-
right " (Putnam's, 1896), E. J. McGillivray's " The
Law of Copyright" (Button, 1902), Colles and
Hardy's " Playwright and Copyright in All Coun-
tries" (Macmillan, 1906).
Our copyriglit office at AVashington issues some
bulletins of great use. Bulletin No. 14 is " The
Copyright Law pf the United States of America.
Being the act of March 4, 1909 (in force July 1,
1909) as amended by the acts of August 24, 1912,
March 2, 1913, and March 28, 1914, together with
rules of practice and procedure under section 25 of the
Supreme Court of the United States." It is sup-
plied with an excellent index. Bulletin No. 3 is
" Copyright Enactments of the United States, 1783-
1906." This has been very carefully compiled by
Thorvald Solberg, Register of Copyrights. It gives
the laws passed by the original states, the acts of
congress from 1790 to 1905, and the international
and state regulations. Bulletin No. 16 is " Copy-
right in England. Act 1 and 2 CJeo. 5. Ch. 46.
An Act to Amend and Consolidate the Law Relating
to Copyright, passed December 16, 1911." It too
is fully indexed.
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LINCOLN'S COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
I. Life of Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln has been called the tj^pical
American. He is surely one of the great men in all
history. Yet he was born in a log cabin of one room,
lighted by a single window, with one plank door and
a huge chimney built outside at one end. This was
near Hodgensville, Kentucky, on February 12, 1809.
His father, who was a rather shiftless man, tried to
better his condition by moving farther into the wilder-
ness, near Gentryville, Indiana, when little Abe was
only seven. When Abe was twenty the family again
moved to a frontier region near Decatur, Illinois.
During this time, Lincoln says, his education was
defective. In fact, it amounted in all to not more
than a year of schooling. As soon as he was old
enough, his father made him assist in all kinds of
work on the farm or in the forest. When he was not
needed at home, his father hired him out at twenty-
five cents a day to plough, chop wood, carpenter, take
care of the horses, and help the women with the
'^ chores." In the intervals betw^een work he went
to the schools kept by itinerant teachers in those
sparsely settled regions. In Kentucky he learned
faster than any of his schoolmates, probably because
he had the first requisite for progress — an eager
desire for study. Even at that early age " he would
get spicewood bushes, hack them up on a log, and
burn them two or three together, for the purpose of
giving light by which he might pursue his studies."
From the wandering preachers he also got notions
of public speaking, which he put into practice on
xxviii
INTRODUCTION xxix
groups of his playmates. In Indiana, where bears
and other wild animals then roved the woods, he
learned little more. He declared that if a straggler
supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn
in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard.
There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for
education, yet he gained the fundamentals, reading
writing, and ciphering.
A few good books he read thoroughly, the Bible,
^' ^sop's Fables," '' Robinson Crusoe," '' Pilgrim's
Progress," a " Histor}^ of the United States," and
Weem's " Life of Washington." So ambitious w^as
he that in his own words " he read through every book
he had ever heard of in that country, for a circuit of
fifty miles." He kept a book in a chink in the logs
to pore over in the morning as soon as it grew light
enough. He pondered over what he read, making
long extracts with a turkey-buzzard pen and brier-
root ink. If he had no copy-book at hand, he would
write with a charred stick on the wooden fire-shovel.
He early earned a reputation for being able to
explain things hard for the other boys to understand.
He later said of his boyhood:
'^ Among my earliest recollections I remember how,
when a mere child, I used to get irritated when any-
body talked to me in a way I could not understand.
I do not think I ever got angry at anything else in
my life; but that always disturbed my temper, and
has ever since. I can remember going to my little
bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an even-
ing with my father, and spending no small part of
the night walking up and down and trying to make
out what was the exact meaning of some of their,
to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep, although I
tried to, when I got on such a hunt for an idea until
I had caught it; and when I thought I had got it.
XXX INTRODUCTION
I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and
over; until I had put it in language plain enough,
as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend/'
So self-reliant had he become by eighteen that he
read the ^^ Revised Statutes of Indiana/' which con-
tained the Declaration of Independence, the Con-
stitution of the United States, and the Ordinance of
1787, in addition to the laws of the state. He dis-
cussed this abstruse collection intelligently with some
of the neighbors. The storekeeper at Gentryville
took a newspaper. Lincoln led in the discussion
of its contents, for the group recognized his remarks
as the best informed and the shrewdest. In the
fields the hands would throw dow^n scythes and axes
to form a circle around him as he mounted a stump
and repeated the sermon of the day before or spoke
on some political topic.
Shortly after the family moved to Illinois, Abraham
at twenty-one started out in life for himself with only
his two hands as capital. After taking a stock of
produce to New Orleans he became a clerk in a country
store at NevN^ Salem, a village near Springfield which
no longer exists. He immediately became popular,
partly because he was the strongest man and the best
wrestler in the country and partly because he seldom
lost his temper and never fought except to right
some wrong. He continued his education in the ample
leisure that his duties left, walking several miles to
argue in a debating society and studying Kirkham's
grammar until he understood everything in it. After
serving as captain in the Black Hawk War, he went into
a partnership, but continued to study a great deal.
He read Burns and Shakespeare and pondered over
the famous legal authority, Blackstone. He had
one day bought a barrel of goods to oblige an emigrant
to the West. On emptying it later he discovered
INTRODUCTION xxxi
the volumes of Blackstone at the bottom. '' The
more I read, the more intensely interested I became,"
he declared nearly thirty years afterward. '' Never
in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed.
I read until I devoured them."
This power to master subjects by himself, to do his
own thinking, was displayed again in his learning
surveying. When the county surveyor needed depu-
ties, he asked Lincoln to serve. The fact that Lin-
coln knew nothing about surveying made no differ-
ence, for he was given time to learn. He at once
procured a treatise on the subject. For six weeks
he studied it and a few others incessantly, often sitting
up until nearly dawn, but in those six weeks he
mastered a subject that an ordinary person would
have needed six months to learn. What is more,
his surveys were always correct.
Another trait that he manifested during this time
w^as honesty. While he was a clerk, he once dis-
covered that he had taken six cents too much from a
customer. As soon as the store was closed, he walked
three miles to i^eturn the sum. The last thing he
did before closing late one afternoon was to sell a
pound of tea. On coming back in the morning he
discovered that the weight in the scales w^as four
ounces. He immediately shut the store to deliver the
rest of the pound. The store finally failed. His
partner died, leaving Lincoln with a debt of eleven
hundred dollars. He called it the '^ national debt,"
it was so heavy. But for fourteen years he kept
paying on it at the high rate of interest then common,
until he had settled for the whole.
Lincoln's immense personal popularity made it
easy for him for eight years, from 1834 to 1842, to
defeat any opponent for the state legislature. He
bought his first suit of clothes, of country jeans, when
xxxii INTRODUCTION
he started out on foot for his first t^rm at the state
capitol, seventy-five miles away. He early showed
his political adroitness by successfully directing the
measure for the removal of the capitol to Spring-
field. In 1S37 he started the practice of law in that
promising city of fifteen hundred inhabitants. From
1842 to 1854, with the exception of one term in Con-
gress, 1847-1849; he devoted most of his time to the
profession.
His pleadings were not very learned. Indeed, he
rather neglected precedents, but presented the argu-
ment to the jury so logically and persuasively that he
seldom lost. This was partly due to the fact that he
would never take a case in which he did not Ijelieve.
His practice is illustrated by the following incident:
After listening attentively in his Springfield office
to a man who talked earnestly and in a low voice,
Lincoln at length broke in: ^' Yes, we can doubt-
less gain your case for you; we can set a whole neigh-
borhood at loggerheads; we can distress a widowed
mother and her six fatherless children and thereby
get you six hundred dollars to which you seem to have
a legal claim, but which rightfully belongs, it appears
to me, as much to the woman and her children as it
does to you. You must remember that some things
legally right are not morally right. We shall not take
your case, but will give you a little advice for which
we will charge you nothing. You seem to be a
sprightly, energetic man; we would advise you to try
your hand at making six hundred dollars in some
other way."
In arguing a case he unerringly went to the root of
the matter, stripped all verbiage from the idea, and
presented the essential points with unfailing good
humor, illustrated from an unrivalled fund of witty
stories. One of his most famous trials was the defence
INTRODUCTION xxxiii
of Duff Armstrong against a charge of murder. The
most damaging evidence was given by one Allen,
who testified that he had seen Armstrong strike the
blow between ten and eleven o'clock in the evening.
When asked how he saw it, he said that the moon
was shining brightly. Lincoln by his questions kept
him repeating the statement until it stood out before
the jury as the pivotal point in the case. At the close
of his address to the jury he said he could prove
Allen's testimony false. Allen never saw the blow
struck, because between ten and eleven o'clock that
night the moon was too low in the heavens. He then
passed an almanac among the jurors to prove his
statement. When the jury filed out, he said to the
mother, '^ Aunt Hannah, j^our son will be free before
sundown." And he was. For his services Lincoln
accepted from her no fee. His fees were always
smaller than other lawyers thought proper. Though
he rose to the head of the bar of Illinois, and tried
over a hundred cases before the Supreme Court of the
state, his income was usually only between two and
three thousand dollars a year.
II. Lincoln and Slavery
To understand the rest of his life we must now
glance at his attitude toward slavery. Slavery be-
came a question of national importance after Eli
Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin in 1793, for
only then did slave labor become profitable. To the
ensuing controversy between tlie northern and the
southern states a measure of peace was given in 1820
by the Missouri Compromise, which forbade slavery
in all states to be admitted thereafter from territory
north of 36° 30' north latitude, the southern bound-
ary of Missouri.
xxxiv INTRODUCTION
When Lincoln began his political life in Illinois
there was much sentiment in favor of slavery. An
abolitionist was regarded as an Eastern crank. In
1837 the legislature even passed almost unanimously
a set of resolutions disapproving of abolition societies
and declaring the right of property in slaves sacred.
Now Lincoln had seen something of the conditions
of slavery on the Ohio River and in two trips to New
Orleans. He early came to have a well-grounded
opinion on the subject, and he always had the courage
to act as he believed right. Consequently he, with a
single other man, boldly signed a protest, affirming
their belief that " the institution of slavery is founded
on both injustice and bad policy."
In private life he was equally firm. To his friend
Speed, a slaveholder, he wrote: " In 1841 you and
I had together a tedious low-water trip on a steam-
boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember
as well as I do that from Louisville to the mouth of
the Ohio there were on board ten or a dozen slaves
shackled together with irons. That sight was a con-
stant torture to me."
The clearness of his vision on moral matters and the
strength of his convictions appeared again while he
was in Congress. He introduced a bill to prohibit
the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and on
the proposal to prohibit slavery in the territory
that might be acquired by the country after the war
with Mexico he said he voted " about forty-two
times." Shortly after he left Congress the whole
question was supposed to be closed by the Compro-
mise of 1850. He settled down quietly in Spring-
field, losing interest in politics and devoting liis ener-
gies to his law practice.
From this quiet he was aroused in 1854 by the pas-
sage of a bill giving territorial government to Kansas
INTRODUCTION xxxv
and Nebraska. This measure, introduced by Senator
Douglas of Illinois, repealed the Missouri Compro-
mise and permitted the people who should settle in
new territories to reject or establish slavery as they
should see fit. Such was the theory of " popular
sovereignty." Lincoln was aroused. He felt that
slavery threatened to spread over the whole country.
When Douglas returned to Illinois to defend himself,
Lincoln was chosen to meet him. In a speech at the
State Fair in Springfield his feelings came near stifling
utterance. He quivered with emotion. The house
WIS still as death. That winter in a race for the
United States Senate he induced his followers against
their will to vote against him so as to elect a Democrat
who was opposed to Douglas's doctrines.
In the spring of 1855 he went to the convention at
Bloomington at which the new Republican party was
organized in Illinois. He was advised not to attend
because the Republicans had gathered so little strength
that to join with them would seal his political future.
He not only appeared in the hall but responded to a
spontaneous call to speak. His address has become
famous as the " Lost Speech." One of the news-
paper men said: '' I became so absorbed in his mag-
netic oratory that I forgot myself and ceased to take
notes; and joined with the convention in cheering
and stamping and clapping to the end of his speech.
. . . All the newspaper men present had been equally
carried away." But they all wrote to their papers
that his fervid and fearless address was the greatest
speech ever made in Illinois.
The Democrats won the campaign of 1856, electing
Buchanan president, but he was scarcely in the chair
before the Republican party, though yet in its infancy,
was solidified and greatly strengthened by the Dred
Scott decision of the Supreme Court. This held in
XXX vi INTRODUCTION
effect that Congress could not exclude slavery from the
territories. The agitation was growing more and
more violent when the Republican convention met in
June, 1858, at Springfield and designated Lincoln
as its first and only choice as the successor of Stephen
A. Douglas. For weeks Lincoln had been preparing
for the speech of acceptance by jotting down on
envelopes and stray pieces of paper ideas and phrases
suitable for the occasion. The day before delivering
it he read this carefully prepared address to some of
his friends. They shook their heads at the figure
in the first paragraph: ''A house divided against
itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot
endure permanently half slave and half free. I do
not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will
cease to be divided. It will become all one thing
or all the other." After listening patientl}^ to their
prediction of defeat, he rose from his chair and said:
'' If it is decreed that I should go down because of this
speech, then let me go down linked to the truth — let
me die in the advocacy of what is just and right."
It was a demonstration of wisdom and courage very
rare in political life.
The same penetrating insight into the essential
elements of the question appeared in his celebrated
debate with Douglas that summer and fall. It was
the most exciting contest that had ever been held
in Illinois. Halls were not large enough for the
audiences. The speeches were delivered in the after-
noon, in groves, or on the open prairie. The discussion
served but to deepen Lincoln's two firmest convic-
tions, that slavery was wrong and that Congress
had the power and the right to control it in the terri-
tories. The first Douglas left in the background,
but the second he was forced to deny. In the second
of the seven meetings Lincoln propounded to Douglas
INTRODUCTION xxxvii
a question which all his friends told him would cost
him the senatorship. It was: '' Can the people of a
United States territory in any lawful way, against
the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude
slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a
state constitution? " If Douglas answered No, Illinois
would not elect him to the Senate. If he answered
Yes, the South would abandon him. Lincoln saw
this very clearly. He was willing to lose the senator-
ship if the Republicans could thereby gain enough
strength to defeat Douglas in 1860. So he replied
to his friends: ^' I am after larger game; the battle
of 1860 is worth a hundred of this." It is most likely
that he was thinking not of his own personal gain in
that battle, but of the success of his party and prin-
ciples. When his defeat was announced to him in
November, he declared to a friend: ^^ I am glad I
made the late race. It gave me a hearing on the great
and durable question of the age which I could have
had in no other way; and though I now sink out of
view and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made
some marks which will tell for the cause of liberty
long after I am gone."
Looking back at the contest, we admire Lincoln's
political sagacity and moral grandeur. The effect
at the time was to make him knowm all over the coun-
try as a leader in the growing party. He sprang
'^ at once from the position of a capital fellow and a
leading lawyer of Illinois to a national reputation."
Douglas was at the time probably the foremost leader
in political life. He was recognized as the readiest
and ablest debater in the United States Senate. Yet
he said of Lincoln: '^ I have been in Congress six-
teen years, and there is not a man in the Senate I
would not rather encounter in debate." The New
York ^'Evening Post" said: *' No man of his gen-
xxxviii INTRODUCTION
eration has grown more rapidly before the country
than Lincoln in this canvass." An Eastern statesman
asked: '' Do you realize that no greater speeches
have been made on public questions in the history
of the country; that his laiowledge of the subject
is profound, his logic unanswerable, his style inimit-
able? "
The Illinois Republican Committee published both
sides of the debate in a single volume in 1S59. In
1S60 it was reprinted in Ohio as a campaign document.
His speeches thus obtained an unprecedented circu-
lation in print. Everywhere they were read as the
most complete and able statement of the Republican
position. In fact, it was he who had welded into a
harmonious whole the principles of this recently
formed but rapidly growing organization. In 1S59
he was induced to speak against Douglas in Ohio in
the gubernatorial race. Douglas's Columbus speech
of September 7 he honored by an immediate reply
and by making it the starting-point for his most
laboriously prepared political argument. Such was
the address delivered at Cooper Institute in New York
on February 27, 1860.
III. The Cooper Institute Address
The man whose moral earnestness and self-dis-
ciplined mind had given him a profound comprehen-
sion of the whole slavery question eagerly seized the
opportunity to address an Eastern audience. One
morning in October, 1859, he rushed into his law
office in Springfield with a letter from New York
inviting him to lecture at Plymouth Church, Brooklyn.
After some conference with his friends he replied that
he would speak on the political situation some time
late in February. Probably for financial reasons the
INTRODUCTION xxxix
obligation for the course wa^ assumed by the Young-
Men's Republican Union, which invited him on Feb-
ruary 9, 1860, to deliver a lecture to an audience of
the " better, but busier citizens, who never attend a
political meeting."
He spent the winter in careful preparation in the
state library at Springfield, turning over many vol-
umes and searching narrowly the records of our
early political history. Yet after this painstaking
and thorough study he felt misgivings. When he
arrived in New York, he learned that he would speak,
not in Brooklyn, but in the auditorium of the recently
completed Cooper Institute. Fearing he was not
quite equal to the distinguished audience and the
great opportunity it offered to impress himself on the
East, he spent nearly two and a half days in going
over the ground and revising his notes. He even
arranged with a friend to sit in the rear of the hall
and raise his high hat on a cane if he did not speak
loudly enough. For the auditorium, which is still
used for important public meetings, was then regarded
as mammoth.
The night of February 27 was snowy. There was,
besides, a charge of twenty-five cents for admission,
so that the hall was not entirely filled. A large num-
ber of people preferred standing to sitting in the
rear seats. It was an unusually intellectual and
cultured audience that greeted him with loud and
prolonged applause when David Dudley Field and
William Cullen Bryant escorted him to the plat-
form, which was crowded with distinguished Republi-
cans. The " Tribune '' had urged all Republicans
to hear him because he might never be heard in the
city again. Bryant introduced him merely as " an
eminent citizen of the West, whom you know, or
whom you have known hitherto only by fame."
xl INTRODUCTION
But according to the report of the " Evening Post "
the next day: ''At the conclusion of Mr. Lincoln's
address the great audience rose, almost to a man
and expressed their approbation by the most enthusi-
astic applause, the waving of handkerchiefs, and re-
peated cheers/'
How he felt on that memorable occasion he related
to his partner on his return home: '' For once in his
life he was greatly abashed over his personal appear-
ance. The new suit of clothes which he donned on
his arrival in New York were ill-fitting garments,
and showed the creases made while packed in the
valise; and for a long time after he began his speech
and before he became ' warmed up ' he imagined
that the audience noticed the contrast between his
Western clothes and the neat-fitting suits of Mr.
Bryant and others who sat on the platform. The
collar of his coat on the right side had an unpleasant
way of flying up whenever he raised his arm to gesticu-
late. He imagined the audience noticed this also.''
How others were impressed may be seen in the
account of Hon. Joseph H. Choate, later ambassador
to Great Britain and one of our greatest orators:
" He appeared in every sense of the word like one of
the plain people among whom he loved to be counted.
At first sight there was nothing impressive or imposing
about him — except that his great stature singled him
out of the crowd; his clothes hung awkwardly on his
giant frame, his face was of a dark pallor, without
the slightest tinge of color; his seamed and rugged
features bore the furrows of hardship and struggle;
his deep-set eyes looked sad and anxious; his coun-
tenance in repose gave little evidence of that brain
power which had raised him from the lowest to the
highest station among his countrymen; as he talked
to me before the meeting, he seemed ill at ease, with
INTRODUCTION xli
that sort of apprehension which a young man might
feel before presenting himself to a new and strange
audience, whose critical disposition he dreaded. It
was a great audience, including all the noted men —
all the learned and cultured — of his party in New York:
editors, clergymen, statesmen, lawyers, merchants,
critics. They were all very curious to hear him.
His fame as a powerful speaker had preceded him,
and exaggerated rumor of his wit — the worst fore-
runner of an orator — had reached the East. When
Mr. Bryant presented him, on the high platform of
the Cooper Institute, a vast sea of eager upturned
faces greeted him, full of intense curiosity to see what
this rude child of the people was like. He was equal
to the occasion. When he spoke he was transformed;
his eye kindled, his voice rang, his face shone and
seemed to light up the whole assembly. For an hour
and a half he held his audience in the hollow of his
hand. His style of speech and manner of delivery
were severely simple. W^hat Lowell called ' the
grand simplicities of the Bible,' with which he was
so familiar, were reflected in his discourse. With no
attempt at ornament or rhetoric, without parade or
pretence, he spoke straight to the point. If any
came expecting the turgid eloquence or the ribaldry
of the frontier, they must have been startled at the
earnest and sincere purity of his utterances. It was
marvelous to see how this untutored man, by mere
self-discipline and the chastening of his own spirit,
had outgrown all meretricious arts, and found his
own way to the grandeur and strength of absolute
simplicity."
The next morning the " Tribune " printed the fol-
lowing editorial :
" The Speech of Abraham Lincoln at the Cooper
Institute last evening was one of the happiest and most
xlii INTRODUCTION
convincing political arguments ever made in this
City, and was addressed to a crowded and most
appreciating audience. Since the days of Clay and
Webster, no man has spoken to a larger assemblage
of the intellect and mental culture of our City. Mr.
Lincoln is one of nature's orators, using his rare
powers solely and effectively to elucidate and con-
vince, though their inevitable effect is to delight and
electrify as well. We present herewith a very full
and accurate report of this Speech; yet the tones,
the gestures, the kindling eye and the mirth-provok-
ing look, defy the reporter's skill. The vast assem-
blage frequently rang with cheers and shouts of ap-
plause, Avhich were prolonged and intensified at the
close. No man ever before made such an impression
on his first appeal to a New- York audience."
Yet the completeness of his success was not im-
mediately understood. After the address he was taken
to supper at the Athenaeum Club, where five or six
of the Republicans who happened to be in the build-
ing were invited in. When the con^'ersation turned
on the prospects of the Republican party, one of those
who had not heard him enquired: ''Mr. Lincoln,
what candidate do 3^ou' really think would be most
likely to carry Illinois?" Lincoln replied indirectly:
" Illinois is a peculiar state, in three parts. In north-
ern Illinois Mr. Seward would have a larger majority
than I could get. In middle Illinois I think I could
call out a larger vote than Mr. Seward. In southern
Illinois it would make no difference who was the can-
didate." Nearly every one there took the answer to
b3 merely illustrative.
When the party broke up, Mr. Nott, who edited the
speech for campaign circulation, started to walk down
to the Astor House with Lincoln. But as Lincoln
was limping because his new boots hurt him, they
INTRODUCTION xiiii
soon boarded a street car. Mr. Nott got off when
it arrived at his street, allowing Lincoln, looking sad
and lonely, to ride quite alone to the side door of the
Astor House. When he next came to New York,
he rode down Broadway at noonday, standing erect
in an open barouche drawn by four white horses.
Long lanes of patriotic citizens stood in the streets
and on the sidewalks, or leaned from windows and
from housetops to cheer him as the President of the
United States.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON LINCOLN
Of the almost innumerable lives of Lincoln, a very
good short biography is that by Norman Hapgood,
'' Abraham Lincoln. The Man of the People '' (Mac-
millan, 1909). It brings out clearly his closeness
to the common people throughout his career. Prob-
ably the most interesting to the senior high school
pupil is '' Herndon's Lincoln. The True Story of a
Great Life. The History and Personal Recollections
of Abraham Lincoln by William H. Herndon. For
Twenty Years his Friend and Law Partner.'' This
appears in several editions, a good one being by
Appleton (1909). A very complete and readable
record is Ida M. Tarbell's '' The Life of Abraham
Lincoln." It attracted a good deal of attention when
it ran in '^ McClure's Magazine." partly because of the
profuse illustrations. (Doubleday & McClure Co.,
1900.) An entertaining mine of information is
Allen Thorndike Rice's ^' Reminiscences of Abraham
Lincoln by Distinguished Men of his Time." Of the
several editions a good one is issued by Harper &
Brothers (1909). A study of his relation to our
history and government is John T. Morse's ^' Abraham
Lincoln " in the American Statesmen Series (Hough-
ton Mifflin, 1893). The standard biography is that
written by his secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John
Hay, '^Abraham Lincoln: A History." It is issued
in ten volumes by the Century Company (1890).
John G. Nicolay also wrote a '' Short Life of Abraham
Lincoln." (Century Company, 1902.) Boys and
girls will be fascinated by Helen Nicolay 's '^ Boy's
xliv
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON LINCOLN xlv
Life of Abraham Lincoln" (Century Company, 1906).
A simple and clear account is Charles W. Moores's
^' The Life of Abraham Lincoln for Boys and Girls."
The remarkable influence which Lincoln exerted over
men is described in Alonzo Rothschild's " Lincoln,
Master of Men" (Houghton Mifflin, 1906). His
life and practices as a lawyer are recounted in Fred-
erick Trevor Hill's " Lincoln the Lawyer " (Century
Company, 1906).
Of the essays and addresses on Lincoln one of the
most eloquent is that delivered by Joseph H. Choate
before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution on
November 13, 1900, while he was our ambassador
to Great Britain (T. Y. Crowell & Co., 1901).
Ralph Waldo Emerson's remarks at the funeral ser-
vices held in Concord, Massachusetts, April 19, 1865,
(Complete Works, Vol. II, 1SS4), show how clearly
his greatness was perceived at the time of his assas-
sination. The same is seen in James Russell Lowell's
essay, which appeared in the " North American Re-
view " for January, 1864, as comment on Lincoln's
annual message of December 9, 1863. (My Study
Windows, 1871 or Political Essays, 1890.) An excel-
lent review of his whole life is Carl Schurz's '' Abraham
Lincoln." (The essays of Schurz, Emerson, and
Lowell are bound up together in the Riverside Litera-
ture Series.)
The " Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln "
have been edited in two volumes by Nicolay and Hay
(Century Company, 1894). A very handsome edi-
tion in twelve volumes is issued by the F. D. Tandy
Company (1905-6). Probably the handiest edition
of his " Speeches and Letters " is that edited by Merwin
Roe in the Everyman's Library (E. P. Button).
His " Speeches " have been compiled by L. E. Chit-
tenden (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1895). An ex-
xlvi BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE OX LINCOLN
cellent edition of " Selections from Inaugurals, Ad-
dresses and Letters " is Dodge's (Longmans, Green,
& Co., 1913). The most convenient edition of the
Lincoln-Douglas Debates is George Haven Putnam's
(G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1912). The edition of the
Cooper Institute address which was issued in Septem-
ber, 1860, for campaign use, is printed in the appendix
of George Haven Putnam's " Aljraham Lin<^oln.
The People's Leader in the Struggle for National
Existence." (Putnam's, 1909.) Written for his chil-
dren and grandchildren, the biography will give any
boy or girl a good notion of Lincoln's place in our
history. The speech is prefaced by several inter-
esting letters as well as by the original introduction.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
Life op Lincoln.
Contemporary
Biography.
Contemporary
American History.
1809. Lincoln born, Feb
12.
1816. Family moved to
Indiana.
1818. Mother died.
1819. Father married
Sarah Johnston.
1830. Family moved to
Illinois.
1831. Settled in New
Salem.
1832. Enlisted in the
Black Hawk War; un-
successful candidate
for the legislature.
1833. Postmaster o f
New Salem; deputy
surveyor's clerk.
1834. Elected to t h e
legislature.
1836. Reelected to the
legislature. Presiden-
tial Elector.
1837. Admitted to the
bar. Moved to Spring-
field.
1838. Reelected to t h e
legislature.
1840. Presidential Elec-
tor.
1842. Married to Marv
Todd.
18U9. Gladstone, Dar-
win, Tennyson, Poe
Holmes born.
1813. Douglas born.
1822. Grant born.
1830. Douglas moved to
New York.
1833. Douglas moved to
Illinois.
1834. Douglas admitted
to the bar.
1835. Douglas elected
State's Attorney.
1836. Douglas elected to
the legislature.
1837. Douglas appoint-
ed Register of the
Land Office; nomi-
nated for Congress.
1840. Douglas appoint-
ed Judge of the Illinois
Supreme Court.
1809. Madison Presi-
dent.
1816. Indiana admitted
as a state.
1818. Illinois admitted
as a state.
1820. Missouri C o m -
promise.
1821. Missouri admitted
as a state.
1829. Jackson Presi-
dent.
1830. Speeches of Hayne
and Webster.
1831. Publication of The
Liberator.
1832. Founding of the
New England Anti-
Slavery Sogiety.
1833. Founding of the
AmericanAnti-Slavery
Society.
1837. Van Buren Presi-
dent. Murder of Owen
Love joy.
1841. Harrison Presi-
dent. Tyler Presi-
dent.
xlvii
xlviii
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
CHRONOLOGICAL TABl.'E— Continued
Life of Lincoln
Contemporary
Biography.
1844. Presidential Elec
tor.
1846. Elected to Con-
1848. Presidential Elec-
tor.
1854. Reelected to the
legislature.
1855. Resigned from the
legislature. Candi-
date for the U. S.
Senate.
1856. Candidate for
nomination for Vice-
President.
1858. Candidate for the
U. S. Senate.
1860. Cooper Institute
Address. Elected
President.
1861. Left Springfield,
Feb. 11; inaugurated
March 4.
1862. The Preliminary
Emancipation Procla-
mation, Sept. 22.
1863. The Final Eman-
cipation Proclama-
tion, Jan. 1. The
Gettysburg Address,
Nov. 19.
1864. Reelected to the
Presidency.
1865. Inaugurated, Mar.
4. Assassinated,
April 14; died, April
15; buried at Spring-
field, May 4.
1844. Douglas
to Congress.
elected
1847. Douglas elected U.
S. Senator; moved to
Chicago.
1850. Death of Calhoun
1852. Death of Clay and
of Webster.
1853. Douglas reelected
Senator.
1859. Douglas reelected
to the Senate,
1860. Douglas Demo-
cratic candidate for
the Presidency.
1861. Douglas died.June
3. McClellan Com-
mander-in-Chief.
1864. Grant appointed
Lieutenant-General.
Contemporary
American History.
1845. Polk President.
Texas admitted as a
1846-48. VV^ar with
Mexico.
1849. Taylor President.
1850. Fillmore Presi-
dent. Clay's Com-
promise Measure.
1853. Pierce President.
1854. Kansas-Nebraska
Bill.
1856. Fremont first Re-
publican candidate for
the presidency. Civil
war in Kansas.
1857. Buchanan Presi-
dent. The Dred Scott
Decision.
1858. Lincoln - Douglas
Debates.
1859. Death of John
Brown.
1860. South Carolina Or-
dinance of Secession.
1861. Fall of Fort Sum-
ter, April 12. Battle
of Bull Run, July 21.
Kansas admitted as a
1862. Slavery abolished
in the District of Co-
lumbia, April 16.
1863. Battle of Gettys-
burg, July 1-5.
1864. Battles of the Wa-
derness. May 6-7.
1865. Fall of Richmond,
April 3. Surrender of
Lee, April 9. Johnson
sworn in as President,
April 15.
MACAULAY'S
SPEECHES ON COPYRIGHT
THE FIRST SPEECH ON COPYRIGHT
Delivered in the House of Commons
February 5th, 1841
Though, Sir, it is in some sense agreeable to approach
a subject with which poUtical animosities have noth-
ing to do, I offer myself to your notice with some
reluctance. It is painful to me to take a course which
may possibly be misunderstood or misrepresented 5
as unfriendly to the interests of literature and literary
men. It is painful to me, I will add, to oppose my
honorable and learned friend on a question which
he has taken up from the purest motives, and which
he regards with a parental interest. These feelings 10
have hitherto kept me silent when the law of copy-
right has been under discussion. But as I am, on full
consideration, satisfied that the measure before us
will, if adopted, inflict grievous injury on the public,
without conferring any compensating advantage on 15
men of letters, I think it my duty to avow that opinion
and to defend it.
The first thing to be done, Sir, is to settle on what
principles the question is to be argued. Are we free
to legislate for the public good, or are we not? Is 20
this a question of expediency, or is it a question
of right? Many of those who have written and
petitioned against the existing state of things treat
the question as one of right. The law of nature,
3
4 COPYRIGHT
according to them, gives to every man a sacred and
indefeasible property in his own ideas, in the fruits
of his own reason and imagination. The legislature
has indeed the power to take away this property,
5 just as it has the power to pass an act of attainder
for cutting off an innocent man's head without a trial.
But, as such an act of attainder would be legal mur-
der, so would an act invading the right of an author
to his copy be according to these gentlemen, legal
10 robbery.
Now, Sir, if this be so, let justice be done, cost
w^iat it may. I am not prepared, like my honorable
and learned friend, to agree to a compromise between
right and expediency, and to commit an injustice for
15 the public convenience. But I must say, that his
theory soars far beyond the reach of my faculties.
It is not necessary to go, on the present occasion,
into a metaphysical inquiry about the origin of the
right of property; and certainly nothing but the
20 strongest necessity would lead me to discuss a sub-
ject so likely to be distasteful to the House. I agree,
I own, with Paley in thinking that property is the
creature of the law, and that the law w4iich creates
property can be defended only on this ground, that it
25 is a law beneficial to mankind. But it is unnecessary
to debate that point. For, even if I believed in a
natural right of property, independent of utility and
anterior to legislation, I should still deny that this
right could survive the original proprietor. Few, I
30 apprehend, even of those who have studied in the
most mystical and sentimental schools of moral
philosophy, will be disposed to maintain that there
is a natural law of succession older and of higher
authority than any human code. If there be, it is
35 quite certain that we have abuses to reform much
m^ore serious than any connected with the question of
COPYRIGHT 5
copyright. For this natural law can be only one;
and the modes of succession in the Queen's dominions
are twenty. To go no further than England, land
generally descends to the eldest son. In Kent the
sons share and share alike. In many districts the 5
youngest takes the whole. Formerly a portion of a
man's personal property was secured to his family;
and it was only of the residue that he could dispose
by will. Now he can dispose of the whole by will:
but you limited his power, a few years ago, by enact- 10
ing that the will should not be valid unless there were
two witnesses. If a man dies intestate, his personal
property generally goes according to the statute of
distributions; but there are local customs which
modify that statute. Now which of- all these systems 15
is conformed to the eternal standard of right? Is it
primogeniture, or gavelkind, or borough English?
Are wills jure divinol Are the two witnesses jure
divino? Might not the pars rationahilis of our old
law have a fair claim to be regarded as of celestial 20
institution? Was the statute of distributions enacted
in Heaven long before it was adopted by Parliament?
Or is it to Custom of York, or to Custom of London,
that this preeminence belongs? Surely, Sir, even
those who hold that there is a natural right of prop- 25
erty must admit that rules prescribing the manner
in which the effects of deceased persons shall be
distributed are purely arbitrary, and originate alto-
gether in the will of the legislature. If so, Sir, there
is no controversy between my honorable and learned 30
friend and myself as to the principles on which this
question is to be argued. For the existing law gives
an author copyright during his natural life; nor do
I propose to invade that privilege, which I should,
on the contrary, be prepared to defend strenuously 35
against any assailant. The only point in issue be-
6 COPYRIGHT
tween us is, how long after an author's death the
State shall recognize a copyright in his representa-
tives and assigns; and it can, I thinls:, hardly be
disputed by any rational man that this is a point
5 which the legislature is free to determine in the way
which may appear to be most conducive to the general
good.
We may now, therefore, I think, descend from
these high regions, where we are in danger of being
10 lost in the clouds, to firm ground and clear light.
Let us look at this question like legislators, and after
fairly balancing conveniences and inconveniences,
pronounce between the existing law of copyright and
the law now proposed to us. The question of copy-
15 right. Sir, like most questions of civil prudence, is
neither black nor white, but gray. The system of
copyright has great advantages and great disad-
vantages; and it is our business to ascertain what
these are, and then to make an arrangement under
20 which the advantages may be as far as possible se-
cured, and the disadvantages as far as possible ex-
cluded. The charge which I bring against my honor-
able and learned friend's bill is this, that it leaves
the advantages nearly what they are at present,
25 and increases the disadvantages at least four-fold.
The advantages arising from a system of copy-
right are obvious. It is desirable that we should
have a supply of good books: we cannot have such
a supply unless men of letters are liberally remu-
SOnerated; and the least objectionable way of remu-
nerating them is by means of copyright. You cannot
depend for literary instruction and amusement on
the leisure of men occupied in the pursuits of active
life. Such men may occasionally produce com-
35 positions of great merit. But you must not look to
such men for works which require deep meditation
COPYRIGHT 7
and long research. Works of that kind you can
expect only from persons who make literature the
business of their lives. Of these persons few will be
found among the rich and the noble. The rich and
the noble are not impelled to intellectual exertion by 5
necessity. They may be impelled to intellectual
exertion by the desire of distinguishing themselves,
or by the desire of benefiting the community. But
it is generally within these walls that they seek to
signalize themselves and to serve their fellow crea-10
tures. Both their ambition and their public spirit,
in a country like this, naturally take a political turn.
It is then on men whose profession is literature, and
whose private means are not ample, that you must
rely for a supply of valuable books. Such men must 15
be remunerated for their literary labor. And there
are only two ways in which they can be remunerated.
One of those ways is patronage; the other is copy-
right.
There have been times in which men of letters 20
looked, not to the public, but to the government, or
to a few great men, for the reward of their exertions.
It was thus in the time of Maecenas and Pollio at
Rome, of the Medici at Florence, of Lewis the Four-
teenth in France, of Lord Halifax and Lord Oxford 25
in this country. Now, Sir, I well know that there
are cases in which it is fit and graceful, nay, in which
it is a sacred duty to reward the merits or to relieve
the distresses of men of genius by the exercise of this
species of liberality. But these cases are exceptions. 30
I can conceive no system more fatal to the integrity
and independence of literary men than one under
which they should be taught to look for their daily
bread to the favor of ministers and nobles. I can
conceive no system more certain to turn those minds 35
which are formed by nature to be the blessings and
8 COPYRIGHT
ornaments of our species into public scandals and
pests.
We have, then, only one resource left. We must
betake ourselves to copyright, be the inconveniences
5 of copyright what they may. Those inconveniences,
in truth, are neither few nor small. Copyright is
monopoty, and produces all the effects which the
general voice of mankind attributes to monopoly.
My honorable and learned friend talks very con-
10 temptuously of those who are led away by the theory
that monopoly makes things dear. That monopoly
makes things dear is certainly a theory, as all the
great truths which have been established by the
experience of all ages and nations, and which are
15 taken for granted in all reasonings, may be said to
be theories. It is a theory in the same sense in which
it is a theory that day and night follow each other,
that lead is heavier than water, that bread nourishes,
that arsenic poisons, that alcohol intoxicates. If, as
20 my honorable and learned friend seems to think,
the whole world is in the wrong on this point, if the
real effect of monopoly is to make articles good and
cheap, why does he stop short in his career of change?
Why does he limit the operation of so salutary a
25 principle to sixty years? Why does he consent to
anything short of a perpetuity? He told us that in
consenting to anything short of a perpetuity he was
making a compromise between extreme right and
expediency. But if his opinion about monopoly be
30 correct, extreme right and expediency would coincide.
Or rather why should we not restore the monopoly of
the East India trade to the East India Company?
Why should we not revive all those old monopolies
which, in Elizabeth's reign, galled our fathers so
35 severely that, maddened by intolerable wrong, they
opposed to their sovereign a resistance before which
COPYRIGHT 9
her haughty spirit quailed for the first and for the
last time? Was it the cheapness and excellence of
commodities that then so violently stirred the indig-
nation of the English people? I believe, Sir, that I
may safely take it for granted that the effect of mon- 5
opoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make
them dear, and to make them bad. And I may with
equal safety challenge my honorable friend to find
out any distinction between copyright and other
privileges of the same kind; any reason why a mon- 10
opoly of books should produce an effect directly the
reverse of that which was produced by the East
India Company's monopoly of tea, or by Lord Essex's
monopoly of sweet wines. Thus, then, stands the
case. It is good that authors should be remuner-15
ated; and the least exceptionable way of remuner-
ating them is by a monopoly. Yet monopoly is an
evil. For the sake of the good we must submit to
the evil; but the evil ought not to last a day longer
than is necessary for the purpose of securing the 20
good.
Now, I will not affirm, that the existing law is
perfect, that it exactly hits the point at which the
monopoly ought to cease; but this I confidently say,
that 'the existing law is very much nearer that point 25
than the law proposed by my honorable and learned
friend. For consider this; the evil effects of the
monopoly are proportioned to the length of its dura-
tion. But the good effects for the sake of which we
bear with the evil effects are by no means propor-30
tioned to the length of its duration. A monopoly
of sixty years produces twice as much evil as a mon-
opoly of thirty years, and thrice as much evil as a
monopoly of twenty years. But it is by no means
the fact that a posthumous monopoly of sixty years 35
gives to r.n author thrice as much pleasure and thrice
10 COPYRIGHT
as strong a motive as a posthumous monopoly of
twenty years. On the contrary, the difference is
so small as to be hardly perceptible. We all know
how faintly we are affected by the prospect of very
5 distant advantages, even when they are advantages
which we may reasonably hope that we shall our-
selves enjoy. But an advantage that is to be enjoyed
more than half a century after we are dead, by some-
body, we know not by whom, perhaps by someljody
10 unborn, by somebody utterly unconnected with us, is
really no motive at all to action. It is very probable,
that in the course of some generations, land in the
unexplored and unmapped heart of the Australasian
continent, will be very valuable. But there is none
15 of us who would lay down five pounds for a whole
province in the heart of the Australasian continent.
We know, that neither we, nor anybody for whom
we care, will ever receive a farthing of rent from such
a province. And a man is very little moved by the
20 thought that in the year 2000 or 2100, somebody who
claims through him will employ more shepherds than
Prince Esterhazy, and will have the finest house and
gallery of pictures at Victoria or Sydney. Now, this
is the sort of boon which my honorable and learned
25 friend holds out to authors. Considered as a boon
to them, it is a mere nullity; but, considered as an
impost on the public, it is no nullity, but a very
serious and pernicious reality. I will take an ex-
ample. Dr. Johnson died fifty-six years ago. If the
30 law were what my honorable and learned friend
wishes to make it, somebody would now have the
monopoly of Dr. Johnson's works. Who that some-
body would be it is impossible to say; but we may
venture to guess. I guess, then, that it would have
35 been some bookseller, who was the assign of another
bookseller, who was the grandson of a third book-
COPYRIGHT 11
seller, who had bought the copja'ight from Black
Frank, the Doctor's servant and residuary legatee, in
1785 or 1786. Now, would the knowledge that this
copyright would exist in 1841 have been a source of
gratification to Johnson? Would it have stimulated 5
his exertions? Would it have once drawn him out
of his bed before noon? Would it have once cheered
him under a fit of the spleen? W^ould it have in-
duced him to give us one more allegory, one more life
of a poet, one more imitation of Juvenal? I firmly 10
believe not. I firmly believe that a hundred years
ago, w^hen he was writing our debates for the Gentle-
man's Magazine, he would very much rather have had
twopence to buy a plate of shin of beef at a cook's
shop underground. Considered as a rew^ard to him, 15
the difference between a twenty years' term and a
sixty years' term of posthumous copyright would have
been nothing or next to nothing. But is the difference
nothing to us? I can buy Rasselas for sixpence; I
might have had to give five shillings for it. I can buy 20
the Dictionary, the entire genuine Dictionary, for two
guineas, perhaps for less; I might have had to give
five or six guineas for it. Do I grudge this to a man
like Dr. Johnsoft? Not at all. Show me that the
prospect of this boon roused him to any vigorous 25
effort, or sustained his spirits under depressing cir-
cumstances, and I am quite willing to pay the price
of such an object, heavy as that price is. But what
I do complain of is that my circumstances are to
be worse, and Johnson's none the better; that I am 30
to give five pounds for what to him was not worth
a farthing.
The principle of copyright is this. It is a tax on
readers for the purpose of giving a bounty to writers.
The tax is an exceedingly bad one; it is a tax on 35
one of the most innocent and most salutary of human
12 COPYRIGHT
pleasures; and never let us forget, that a tax on
innocent pleasures is a premium on vicious pleasures.
I admit, however, the necessity of giving a bounty to
genius and learning. In order to give such a bounty,
51 willingly submit even to this severe and burden-
some tax. Nay, I am ready to increase the tax, if it
can be shown that by so doing I should proportionally
increase the bounty. My complaint is, that my
honorable and learned friend doubles, triples, quad-
lOruples, the tax, and makes scarcely any perceptible
addition to the bounty. Why, Sir, what is the
additional amount of taxation which would have
been levied on the public for Dr. Johnson's works
alone, if my honorable and learned friend's bill had
15 been the law of the land? I have not data sufficient
to form an opinion. But I am confident that the
taxation on his Dictionary alone would have amounted
to many thousands of pounds. In reckoning the
whole additional sum which the holders of his copy-
20 rights would have taken out of the pockets of the
public during the last half century at twenty thousand
pounds, I feel satisfied that I very greatly underrate
it. Now, I again say that I think it but fair that we
should pay twenty thousand pounds' in consideration
25 of twenty thousand pounds worth of pleasure and
encouragement received by Dr. Johnson. But I
think it very hard that we should pay twenty thou-
sand pounds for what he would not have valued at
five shillings.
30 My honorable and learned friend dwells on the
claims of the posterity of great writers. Undoubtedly,
Sir, it would be very pleasing to see a descendant of
Shakespeare living in opulence on the fruits of his
great ancestor's genius. A house maintained in
35 splendor by such a patrimony would be a more
interesting and striking object than Blenheim is to
COPYRIGHT 13
us, or than Strathfieldsaye will be to our children.
But, unhappily, it is scarcely possible that, under any
system, such a thing can come to pass. My honor-
able and learned friend does not propose that copy-
right shall descend to the eldest son, or shall be 5
bound up by irrevocable entail. It is to be merely
personal property. It is therefore highly improbable
that it will descend during sixty years or half that
term from parent to child. The chance is that more
people than one will have an interest in it. They 10
will in all probability sell it and divide the proceeds.
The price which a bookseller will give for it will bear
no proportion to the sum which he will afterwards
draw from the public, if his speculation proves suc-
cessful. He will give little, if anything, more for a 15
term of sixty years than for a term of thirty or five
and twenty. The present value of a distant advan-
tage is always small; but when there is great room
to doubt whether a distant advantage will be any
advantage at all, the present value sinks to almost 20
nothing. Such is the inconstancy of the public taste
that no sensible man will venture to pronounce, with
confidence, what the sale of any book published in
our days will be in the years between 1890 and 1900.
The whole fashion of thinking and writing has often 25
undergone a change in a much shorter period than
that to which my honorable and learned friend would
extend posthumous copyright. What would have
been considered the best literary property in the
earlier part of Charles the Second's reign? I imagine 30
Cowley's poems. Overleap sixty years, and you are
in the generation of which Pope asked, ^' Who now
reads Cowley? " What works were ever expected
with more impatience by the public than those of
Lord Bolingbroke, which appeared, I think, in 1754? 35
In 1814, no bookseller would have thanked you for
14 COPYRIGHT
the copyright of them all, if you had offered it to
him for nothing. What would Paternoster Row give
now for the copyright of Hayley's Triumphs of
Temper, so much admired within the memory of
5 many people still living? I say, therefore, that,
from the very nature of literary property, it will
almost always pass away from an author's family;
and I say, that the price given for it to the family
will bear a very small proportion to the tax which the
10 purchaser, if his speculation turns out well, w^ill in
the course of a long series of years levy on the public.
If, Sir, I wished to find a. strong and perfect illus-
tration of the effects which I anticipate from long
copyright, I should select, — my honorable and learned
15 friend will be surprised, — I should select the case
of Milton's granddaughter. As often as this bill
has been under discussion, the fate of Milton's grand-
daughter had been brought forward by the advocates
• of monopoly. My honorable and learned friend has
20 repeatedly told the story with great eloquence and
effect. He has dilated on the sufferings, on the
abject poverty, of this illfated woman, the last of an
illustrious race. He tells us that, in the extremity of
her distress, Garrick gave her a benefit performance of
25 ''Comus," that Johnson wrote a prologue, and that the
public contributed some hundreds of pounds. Was it
fit, he asks, that she should receive, in this eleemosynary
form, a small portion of what was in truth a debt?
Why, he asks, instead of obtaining a pittance from
30 charity, did she not live in comfort and luxury on the
proceeds of the sale of her ancestor's works? But,
Sir, will my honorable and learned friend tell me that
this event, w^hich he has so often and so pathetically
described, was caused by the shortness of the term
35 of copyright? Why, at that time, the duration of
copyright was longer than even he, at present, pro_
COPYRIGHT 15
poses to make it. The monopoly lasted not sixty
years, but for ever. At the time at which Milton's
granddaughter asked charity, Milton's works were
the exclusive property of a bookseller. Within a
few months of the day on which the benefit was 5
given at Garrick's theatre, the holder of the eopy-
right of Paradise Lost, — I think it was Tonson, —
applied to the Court of Chancery for an injunction
against a bookseller, who had published a cheap
edition of the great epic poem, and obtained the in-io
junction. The representation of Comus was, if I
remember rightly, in 1750; the injunction in 1752.
Here, then, is a perfect illustration of the effect of
long copyright. Milton's works are the property of
a single publisher. Everybody who wants them must 15
buy them at Tonson's shop, and at Tonson's price.
Whoever attempts to undersell Tonson is harassed
with legal proceedings. Thousands who would gladly
possess a copy of Paradise Lost, must forego that
great enjoyment. And what, in the meantime, is the 20
situation of the only person for whom we can suppose
that the author, protected at such a cost to the public,
was at all interested? She is reduced to utter des-
titution. Milton's works are under a monopoly. Mil-
ton's granddaughter is starving. The reader is 25
pillaged; but the writer's family is not enriched.
Society is taxed doubly. It has to give an exorbi-
tant price for the poems; and it has at the same time
to give alms to the only surviving descendant of the
poet. 30
But this is not all. I think it right, Sir, to call
the attention of the House to an evil, which is per-
haps more to be apprehended when the author's
copyright remains in the hands of his family, than
when it is transferred to booksellers. I seriously fear 35
that, if such a measure as this should be adopted.
16 COPYRIGHT
many valuable works will be either totally suppressed
or grievously mutilated. I can prove that this danger
is not chimerical; and I am quite certain that, if the
danger be real, the safeguards which my honorable
5 and learned friend has devised are altogether nuga-
tory. That the danger is not chimerical may easily
be shown. Most of us, I am sure, have known per-
' sons who, very erroneously as I think, but from the
best motives, would not choose to reprint Fielding's
10 novels, or Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire. Some gentlemen may per-
haps be of opinion, that it would be as well if Tom
Jones and Gibbon's History were never reprinted.
I will not, then, dwell on these or similar cases. I
15 will take cases respecting which it is not likely that
there will be any difference of opinion here; cases,
too, in which the danger of which I now speak is not
matter of supposition, but matter of fact. Take
Richardson's novels. Whatever I may, on the pres-
20ent occasion, think of my honorable and learned
friend's judgment as a legislator, I must always
respect his judgment as a critic. He will, I am sure,
say that Richardson's novels are among the most
valuable, among the most original works in our
25 language. No writings have done more to raise the
fame of English genius in foreign countries. No
writings are more deeply pathetic. No writings,
those of Shakespeare excepted, show more profound
knowledge of the human heart. As to their moral
30 tendency, I can cite the most respectable testimony.
Dr. Johnson describes Richardson as one who had
taught the passions to move at the command of virtue.
My dear and honored friend, Mr. Wilberforce, in
his celebrated religious treatise, when speaking of
35 the unchristian tendency of the fashionable novels
of the eighteenth century, distinctly excepts Rich-
COPYRIGHT 17
ardson from the censure. Another excellent person
whom I can never mention without respect and
kindness, Mrs. Hannah More, often declared in con-
versation, and has declared in one of her published
poems, that she first learned from the writings of 5
Richardson those principles of piety by which her
life was guided. I may safely say the books cele-
brated as works of art through the whole civilized
world, and praised for their moral tendency by Dr.
Johnson, by Mr. Wilberforce, by Mrs. Hannah More, 10
ought not to be suppressed. Sir, it is my firm belief,
that if the law had been what my honorable and
learned friend proposes to make it, they would have
been suppressed. I remember Richardson's grand-
son well; he was a clergyman in the city of London; 15
he was a most upright and excellent man: but he
had conceived a strong prejudice against works of
fiction. He thought all novel-reading not only friv-
olous but sinful. He said, — this I state on the author-
ity of one of his clerical brethren who is now a bishop, 20
— he said that he had never thought it right to read
one of his grandfather's books. Suppose, Sir, that
the law had been what my honorable and learned
friend would make it. Suppose that the copyright
of Richardson's novels had descended, as might 25
well have been the case, to this gentleman. I firmly
believe, that he would have thought it sinful to give
them a wide circulation. I firmly believe, that he
would not for a hundred thousand pounds have
deliberately done what he thought sinful. He would 30
not have reprinted them. And w^hat protection
does my honorable and learned friend give to the
public in such a case? Why, Sir, what he proposes
is this: if a book is not reprinted during five years,
any person who wishes -to reprint it may give notice 35
in the London Gazette: the advertisement must be
18 COPYRIGHT
repeated three times: a year must elapse; and then,
if the proprietor of the copyright does not put forth
a new edition, he loses his exclusive privilege. Now,
what protection is this to the public? What is a
5 new edition? Does the law define the number of
copies that make an edition? Does it limit the
price of a copy? Are twelve copies on large paper,
charged at thirty guineas each, an edition? It has
been usual, when monopolies have been granted, to
10 prescribe numbers and to limit prices. But I do
not find that my honorable and learned friend pro-
poses to do so in the present case. And, without
some such provision, the security which he offers is
manifestly illusory. It is my conviction, that under
15 such a system as that which he recommends to us,
a copy of Clarissa would have been as rare as an Aldus
or a Caxton.
I will give another instance. One of the most
instructive, interesting, and delightful books in our
20 language is Boswell's Life of Johnson. Now it is
well known that Boswell's eldest son considered this
book, considered the whole relation of Boswell to
Johnson, as a blot in the escutcheon of the family.
He thought, not perhaps altogether without reason,
25 that his father had exhibited himself in a ludicrous
and degrading light. And thus he became so sore
and irritable that at last he could not bear to hear
the Life of Johnson mentioned. Suppose that the
law had been what my honorable and learned friend
30 wishes to make it. Suppose that the copyright of
Boswell's Life of Johnson had belonged, as it well
might, during sixty years, to Boswell's eldest son.
What would have been the consequence? An un-
adulterated copy of the finest biographical work in
35 the world would have been as scarce as the first edition
of Camden's Britannia.
COPYRIGHT 19
These are strong cases. I have shown you that, if
the law had been what you are now going to make
it, the finest prose work of fiction in the language, the
finest biographical work in the language, would very
probably have been suppressed. But I have stated 5
my case weakly. The books which I have mentioned
are singularly inoffensive books, books not touching
on any of those questions which drive even wise men
beyond the bounds of wisdom. There are books of
a very different kind, books which are the rallying 10
points of great political and religious parties. What
is likely to happen if the copyright of one of these
books should by descent or transfer come into the
possession of some hostile zealot? I will take a single
instance. It is only fifty years since John Wesley 15
died; and all his works, if the law had been what
my honorable and learned friend wishes to make
it, would now have been the property of some person
or other. The sect founded by Wesley is the most
numerous, the wealthiest, the most powerful, the 20
most zealous of sects. In every parliamentary
election it is a matter of the greatest importance to
obtain the support of the Wesleyan Methodists.
Their numerical strength is reckoned by hundreds of
thousands. They hold the memory of their founder 25
in the greatest reverence; and not without reason,
for he was unquestionably a great and a good man.
To his authority they constantly appeal. His works
are in their eyes of the highest value. His doctrinal
writings they regard as containing the best system of 30
theology ever deduced from Scripture. His journals,
interesting even to the common reader, are peculiarly
interesting to the Methodist: for they contain the
whole history of that singular polity which, weak and
despised in its beginning, is now, after the lapse of ass
century, so strong, so flourishing, and so formidable.
20 COPYRIGHT
The hymns to which he gave his Imprimatur are a
most important part of the public worship of his
followers. Now, suppose that the copyright of these
works should belong to some person who holds the
5 memory of Wesley and the doctrines and discipline
of the Methodists in abhorrence. There are many
such persons. The Ecclesiastical Courts are at this
very time sitting on the case of a clergyman of the
Established Church who refused Christian burial to
10 a child baptized by a Methodist preacher. I took up
the other day a work which is considered as among
the most respectable organs of a large and growing
party in the Church of England, and there I saw
John Wesley designated as a forsworn priest. Sup-
15 pose that the works of Wesley were suppressed.
Why, Sir, such a grievance would be enough to shake
the foundations of Government. Let gentlemen who
are attached to the Church reflect for a moment
what their feelings would be if the Book of Common
20 Prayer were not to be reprinted for thirty or forty
years, if the price of a Book of Common Prayer were
run up to five or ten guineas. And then let them
determine whether they will pass a law under which
it is possible, under which it is probable, that so in-
25 tolerable a wrong may be done to some sect consisting
perhaps of half a million of persons.
I am so sensible, Sir, of the kindness with which
the House has listened to me, that I will not detain
you longer. I will only say this, that if the measure
30 before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth
part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and
which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be
a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just
as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game
35 were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many
absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by
COPYRIGHT 21
the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by
piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copy-
right has the public feeling on his side. Those who
invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take
the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Every- 5
body is well pleased to see them restrained by the
law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains.
No tradesmen of good repute will have anything
to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this
law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very dif-10
ferent from the present race of piratical booksellers
will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great
masses of capital will be constantly employed in
the violation of the law. Every art will be employed
to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be 15
in the plot. On which side indeed should the public
sympathy be when the question is whether some book
as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Prog-
ress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be
confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage 20
of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred
years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright
with the author when in great distress? Remember
too that, when once it ceases to be considered as
wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, 25
no person can say where the invasion will stop. The
public seldom makes nice distinctions. The whole-
some copyright which now exists will share in the
disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you
are about to create. And you will find that, in at- 30
tempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the
reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a
great extent, annulled those restraints which now
prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living.
If I saw. Sir, any probability that this bill could be so 35
amended in the Committee that mry objections might
22 COPYRIGHT
be removed, I would not divide the House in this
stage. But I am so fully convinced that no alter-
ation which would not seem insupportable to my
honorable and learned friend, could render his measure
5 supportable to me, that I must move, though with
regret, that this bill be read a second time this day
six months.
THE SECOND SPEECH ON COPYRIGHT
Delivered in the House of Commons
April 6th, 1842
I HAVE been amused and gratified by the remarks
which my noble friend has made on the arguments
by which I prevailed on the last House of Commons
to reject the bill introduced by a very able and ac-
complished man, Mr. Serjeant Talfourd. My noble 5
friend has done me a high and rare honor. For
this is, I believe, the first occasion on which a speech
made in one Parliament has been answered in an-
other. I should not find it difficult to vindicate the
soundness of the reasons which I formerly urged; 10
to set them in a clearer light, and to fortify them by
additional facts. But it seems to me that we had
better discuss the bill which is now on our table than
the bill which was there fourteen months ago. Glad
I am to find that there is a very wide difference be- 15
tween the two bills, and that my noble friend, though
he has tried to refute my arguments, has acted as
if he had been convinced by them. • I objected to
the term of sixty years as far too long. My noble
friend has cut that term down to twenty-five years. 20
I warned the House that, under the provisions of
Mr. Serjeant Talfourd' s bill, valuable works might
not improbably be suppressed by the representatives
of authors. My noble friend has prepared a clause
23
24 COPYRIGHT
which, as he thinks, will guard against that danger.
I will not therefore waste the time of the Committee
by debating points which he has conceded, but will
proceed at once to the proper business of this even-
Sing.
Sir, I have no objection to the principle of my
noble friend's bill. Indeed, I had no objection to
the principle of the bill of last year. I have long
thought that the term of copyright ought to be ex-
10 tended. When Mr. Serjeant Talfourd moved for
leave to bring in his bill, I did not oppose the motion.
Indeed I meant to vote for the second reading, and
to reserve what I had to say for the Committee. But
the learned Serjeant left me no choice. He, in strong
15 language, begged that nobody who was disposed to
reduce the term of sixty years would divide with
him. '' Do not," he said, '' give me your support if
all that you mean to grant to men of letters is a
miserable addition of fourteen or fifteen years to the
20 present term. I do not wish for such support. I
despise it." Not wishing to obtrude on the learned
Serjeant a support which he despised, I had no course
left but to take the sense of the House on the second
reading. The circumstances are now different. My
25 noble friend's bill is not at present a good bill; but
it may be improved into a very good bill; nor will
he, I am persuaded, withdraw it if it should be so
improved. He and I have the same object in view
but we differ as to the best mode of attaining that
30 object. We are equally desirous to extend the pro-
tection now enjoyed by writers. In what wa}^ it
may be extended with most benefit to them and with
least inconvenience to the public, is the question.
The present state of the law is this. The author
35 of a work has a certain copyright in that work for a
term of twenty-eight years. If he should live more
COPYRIGHT 25
than twenty-eight years after the publication of the
work, he retains the copyright to the end of his life.
My noble friend does not propose to make any
addition to the term of twenty-eight years. But he
proposes that the copyright shall last twenty-five 5
years after the author's death. Thus my noble
friend makes no addition to that term which is cer-
tain, but makes a very large addition to that term
which is uncertain.
My plan is different. I would make no addition 10
to the uncertain term; but I would make a large
addition to the certain term. I propose to add four-
teen years to the twenty-eight years which the law
now allows to an author. Plis copyright w411, in this
way, last till his death, or till the expiration of forty- 15
two 3^ears, whichever shall first happen. And I think
that I shall be able to prove to the satisfaction of the
Committee that my plan will be more beneficial to
literature and to literary men than the plan of my
noble friend. 20
It must surely. Sir, be admitted that the protec-
tion w^hich we give to books ought to be distributed
as evenly as possible, that every book should have a
fair share of that protection, and no book more than
a fair share. It would evidently be absurd to put 25
tickets into a wheel, with different numbers marked
upon them, and to make writers draw, one a term of
twenty-eight years, another a term of fifty, another a
term of ninety. And yet this sort of lottery is what
my noble friend proposes to establish. I know that 30
we cannot altogether exclude chance. You have tw^o
terms of copyright; one certain, the other uncertain;
and we cannot, I admit, get rid of the uncertain term.
It is proper, no doubt, that an author's copyright
should last during his life. But, Sir, though we can- 35
not altogether exclude chance, we can very much
26 COPYRIGHT
diminish the share which chance must have in distri-
buting the recompense which we wish to give to
genius and learning. By every addition which we
make to the certain term we diminish the influence
5 of chance; by every addition which we make to the
uncertain term we increase the influence of chance.
I shall make myself best understood by putting cases.
Take two eminent female writers, who died within
our own memory, Madame D'Arblay and Miss Austen.
10 As the law now stands. Miss Austen's charming
novels would have only from twenty-eight to thirty-
three years of copyright. For that extraordinary
woman died young: she died before her genius was
fully appreciated by the world. Madame D'Arblay
15 outlived the whole generation to which she belonged.
The copyright of her celebrated novel, Evelina,
lasted, under the present law, sixty-two years. Surely
this inequality is sufficiently great, sixty-two years
of copyright for Evelina, only twenty-eight for Per-
20 suasion. But to my noble friend this inequality
seems not great enough. He proposes to add twenty-
five years to Madame D'Arblay's term, and not a
single day to Miss Austen's term. He would give
to Persuasion a copyright of only twenty-eight years,
25 as at present, and to Evelina a copyright more than
three times as long, a copyright of eighty-seven
years. Now, is this reasonable? See, on the other
hand, the operation of my plan. I make no addition
at all to Madame D'Arblay's term of sixty-two years,
30 which is, in my opinion, quite long enough; but I
extend Miss Austen's term to forty-two years, which
is, in my opinion, not too much. You see. Sir, that
at present chance has too much sway in this matter;
that at present the protection which the state gives
35 to letters is very unequally given. You see that
if my noble friend's plan be adopted, more will be left
COPYRIGHT 27
to chance than under the present system, and you
will have such inequalities as are unknown under
the present system. You see also that, under the
system which I recommend, we shall have, not per-
fect certainty, not perfect equality, but much less 5
uncertainty and inequality than at present.
But this is not all. My noble friend's plan is not
merely to institute a lottery in which some writers will
draw prizes and some will draw blanks. It is much
worse than this. His lottery is so contrived that, in 10
the vast majority of cases, the blanks will fall to the
best books, and the prizes to books of inferior merit.
Take Shakespeare. My noble friend gives a longer
protection than I should give to Love's Labour's Lost,
and Pericles, Prince of Tyre; but he gives a shorter 15
protection than I should give to Othello and Macbeth.
Take Milton. Milton died in 1674. The copy-
rights of Milton's great works would, according to my
noble friend's plan, expire in 1699. Comus appeared
in 1634, the Paradise Lost in 1668. To Comus, then, 20
my noble friend would give sixty-five years of copy-
right, and to the Paradise Lost only thirty-one years.
Is that reasonable? Comus is a noble poem: but
who would rank it with the Paradise Lost? My plan
would give forty-two years both to the Paradise Lost 25,
and to Comus.
Let us pass on from Milton to Dryden. My noble
friend would give more than sixty years of copy-
right to Dryden's worst works; to the encomiastic
verses on Oliver Cromwell, to the Wild Gallant, to 30
the Rival Ladies, to other wretched pieces as bad
as any thing written by Flecknoe or Settle: but for
Theodore and Honoria, for Tancred and Sigismunda
for Cimon and Iphigenia, for Palamon and Arcite,
for Alexander's Feast, my noble friend thinks a copy- 35
right of twenty-eight years sufficient. Of all Pope's
28 COPYRIGHT
works, that to which my noble friend would give the
largest measure of protection is the volume of Pas-
torals, remarkable only as the production of a boy.
Johnson's first work was a Translation of a Book of
5 Travels in Abyssinia, published in 1735. It was so
poorly executed that in his later years he did not like
to hear it mentioned. Boswell once picked up a copy
of it, and told his friend that he had done so. " Do
not talk about it," said Johnson: '^ it is a thing to
10 be forgotten." To this performance my noble friend
would give protection during the enormous term
of seventy-five years. To the Lives of the Poets
he would give protection during about thirty years.
Well; take Henry Fielding; it matters not whom
15 1 take, but take Fielding. His early works are read
only by the curious, and would not be read even by
the curious, but for the fame which he acquired in
the later part of his life by w^orks of a very different
kind. What is the value of the Temple Beau, of
20 the Intriguing Chambermaid, of half a dozen other
plays of which few gentlemen have even heard the
names? Yet to these worthless pieces my noble
friend would give a term of copyright longer by more
than twenty years than that which he would give to
25 Tom Jones and Amelia.
Go on to Burke. His little tract, entitled The
Vindication of Natural Society, is certainly not with-
out merit; but it would not be remembered in our
days if it did not bear the name of Burke. To this
30 tract my noble friend would give a copyright of near
seventy years. But to the great work on the French
Revolution, to the Appeal from the New to the Old
Whigs, to the letters on the Regicide Peace, he would
give a copyright of thirty years or little more.
35 And, Sir, observe that I am not selecting here
and there extraordinary instances in order to make
COPYRIGHT 29
up the semblance of a case. I am taking the greatest
names of our literature in chronological order. Go
to other nations; go to remote ages; you will still
find the general rule the same. There was no copy-
right at Athens or Rome; but the history of the 5
Greek and Latin literature illustrates my argument
quite as well as if copyright had existed in ancient
times. Of all the plays of Sophocles, the one to
which the plan of my noble friend would have given
the most scanty recompense would have been that 10
wonderful masterpiece, the ffidipus at Colonos. Who
w^ould class together the Speech of Demosthenes
against his Guardians, and the Speech for the Crown?
My noble friend, indeed, would not class them to-
gether. For to the Speech against the Guardians he 15
would give a copyright of near seventy years; and
to the incomparable Speech for the Crown a copy-
right of less than half that length. Go to Rome.
My noble friend would give more than twice as long
a term to Cicero's juvenile declamation in defence of 20
Roscius Amerinus as to the Second Philippic. Go
to France; my noble friend would give a far longer
term to Racine's Freres Ennemis than to Athalie,
and to Moliere's Etourdi than to Tartuffe. Go to
Spain. My noble friend w^ould give a longer term to 25
forgotten works of Cervantes, works which nobody
now reads, than to Don Quixote. Go to Germany.
According to my noble friend's plan, of all the works
of Schiller the Robbers would be the most favored:
of all the works of Goethe, the Sorrows of WertherSO
would be the most favored. I thank the Committee
for listening so kindly to this long enumeration.
Gentlemen will perceive, I am sure, that it is not
from pedantry that I mention the names of so many
books and authors. But just as, in our debates on 35
civil affairs, we constantly draw illustrations from
30 COPYRIGHT
civil history, we must, in a debate about literary
property, draw our illustrations from literary history.
Now, Sir, I have, I think, shown from literary history
that the effect of my noble friend's plan would be to
5 give to crude and imperfect w^orks, to third-rate and
fourth-rate works, a great advantage over the highest
{productions of genius. It is impossible to account
for the facts which I have laid before you by attrib-
uting them to mere accident. Their number is too
10 great, their character too uniform. We must seek for
some other explanation; and we shall easily find one.
It is the law of our nature that the mind shall
attain its full power by slow degrees; and this is
especially true of the most vigorous minds. Young
15 men, no doubt, have often produced works of great
merit; but it would be impossible to name any writer
of the first order whose juvenile performances were
his best. That all the most valuable books of history,
of philology, of physical and metaphysical science,
20 of divinity, of political economy, have been produced
by men of mature years, will hardly be disputed.
The case may not be quite so clear as respects
works of the imagination. And yet T know no work
of the imagination of the very highest class that was
25 ever, in any age or country, produced by a man
under thirty-five. Whatever powers a youth may
have received from nature, it is impossible that his
taste and judgment can be ripe, that his mind can be
richly stored with images, that he can have observed
30 the vicissitudes of life, that he can have studied the
nicer shades of character. How, as Marmontel very
sensibly said, is a person to paint portraits who has
never seen faces? On the whole I believe that I maj^,
without fear of contradiction, affirm this, that of
35 the good books now extant in the world more than
nineteen twentieths were published after the writers
COPYRIGHT 31
had attained the age of forty. If this be so, it is
evident that the plan of my noble friend is framed
on a vicious principle. For, while he gives to juvenile
productions a very much larger protection than they
now enjoy, he does comparatively little for the works 5
of men in the full maturity of their powers, and ab-
solutely nothing for any work which is published
during the last three years of the life of the writer.
For, by the existing law, the copyright of such a
work lasts twenty-eight years from the publication; 10
and my noble friend gives only twenty-five years to
be reckoned from the writer's death.
What I recommend is, that the certain term, rec-
koned from the date of publication, shall be forty-
two years instead of twenty-eight years. In this 15
arrangement there is no uncertainty, no inequality.
The advantage which I propose to give will be the
same to every book. No work will have so long a
copyright as my noble friend gives to some books,
or so short a copyright as he gives to others. No 20
copyright will last ninety years. No copyright will
end in twenty-eight years. To every book published
in the course of the last seventeen years of a writer's
life I give a longer term of copyright than my noble
friend gives; and I am confident that no person 25
versed in literary history will deny this, — that in
general the most valuable works of an author are
published in the course of the last seventeen years
of his life. I wall rapidly enumerate a few, and but
a few, of the great works of English w^'iters to which 30
my plan is more favorable than my noble friend's
plan. To Lear, to Macbeth, to Othello, to the Fairy
Queen, to the Paradise Lost, to Bacon's Novum
Organum and De Augmentis, to Locke's Essay on
the Human Understanding, to Clarendon's History, 35
to Hume's History, to Gibbon's History, to Smith's
32 COPYRIGHT
Wealth of Nations, to Addison's Spectators, to almost
all the great works of Burke, to Clarissa and Sir
Charles Grandison, to Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones,
and Amelia, and, with the single exception of Waverley
5 to all the novels of Sir Walter Scott, I give a longer
term of copyright than my noble friend gives. Can
he match that list? Does not that list contain what
England has produced greatest in many various
ways, poetry, philosophy, history, eloquence, wit,
10 skilful portraiture of life and manners? I confi-
dently, therefore, call on the Committee to take my
plan in preferencje to the plan of my noble friend. I
have shown that the protection which he proposes to
give to letters is unequal, and unequal in the worst
15 way. I have shown that his plan is to give protec-
tion to books in inverse proportion to their merit. I
shall move when we come to the third clause of the
bill to omit the words " twenty-five years," and in a
subsequent part of the same clause I shall move to
20 substitute for the words 'twenty-eight years" the
words " forty-two years." I earnestly hope that the
Committee will adopt these amendments; and I feel
the firmest conviction that my noble friend's bill, so
amended, will confer a great boon on men of letters
25 with the smallest possible inconvenience to the public.
LINCOLN'S
ADDRESS AT COOPER UNION
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
Monday, February 27, 1860
[This address, Lincoln's first important direct message to the
people of the East, was very carefully prepared. The text is
taken from The Tribune Tract, issued as a campaign document.
Another version, revised by Lincoln, was published also for cam-
paign distribution in September, 1860. It differs only in slight
details from our text.]
Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens of New York:
The facts with which I shall deal this evening are
mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new
in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall
be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the 5
facts, and the inferences and observations following
that presentation.
In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, as
reported in the New York Times, Senator Douglas
said: 10
Our fathers, when they framed the Government under
which we live, understood this question just as well, and even
better, than we do now.
I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this
discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise 15
and agreed starting point for a discussion between
Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed
by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry:
35
36 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
*' What was the understanding those fathers had of the
question mentioned?"
What is the frame of Government under which we
live?
5 The answer must be, "The Constitution of the
United States." That Constitution consists of the
original, framed in 1787 (and under which the present
Government first went into operation), and twelve
subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of
10 which were framed in 1789.
Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution?
I suppose the "thirty-nine" who signed the original
instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed
that part of the present Government. It is almost
15 exactly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether
true to say they fairly represented the opinion and
sentiment of the whole nation at that time. Their
names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to
quite all, need not now be repeated.
20 I take these "thirty-nine," for the present, as being
" our fathers who framed the Government under which
we live."
What is the question which, according to the text,
those fathers understood "just as well, and even
25 better, than we do now?"
It is this: Does the proper division of local from
Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, for-
bid our Federal Government to control as to slavery
in our Federal Territories?
SO Upon this. Senator Douglas holds the affirmative,
and Republicans the negative. This affirmation and
denial form an issue; and this issue — this question —
is precisely what the text declares our fathers under-
stood "better than we."
35 Let us now inquire whether the "thirty-nine," or
any of them, ever acted upon this question; and if
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 37
they did, how they acted upon it — how they ex-
pressed that better understanding.
In 1784, three years before the Constitution, the
United States then owning the Northwestern Terri-
tory, and no other, the Congress of the Confederation 5
had before them the question of prohibiting slavery
in that Territory; and four of the "thirty-nine" who
afterward framed the Constitution were in that Con-
gress, and voted on that question. Of these, Roger
Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh WiUiamson voted 10
for the prohibition, thus showing that, in their under-
standing, no hne dividing local from Federal authority,
nor anything else, properly forbade the Federal Gov-
ernment to control as to slavery in Federal territory.
The other of the four — James McHenry — voted against 15
the prohibition, showing that for some cause he thought
it improper to vote for it.
In 17S7, still before the Constitution, but while the
Convention was in session framing it, and while the
Northwestern Territory still was the only territory 20
owned by the United States, the same question of pro-
hibiting slavery in the Territory again came before the
Congress of the Confederation; and three more of the
"thirty-nine" who afterward signed the Constitution
were in that Congress, and voted on the question. 25
They were William Blount, William Few, and Abraham
Baldwin; and they all voted for the prohibition — thus
showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing
local from Federal authority, nor anything else, properly
forbade the Federal Government to control as to 30
slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibi-
tion became a law, being part of what is now well
known as the Ordinance of '87.
The question of Federal control of slavery in the
Territories seems not to have been directly before the 35
convention which framed the original Constitution;
38 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
and hence it is not recorded that the "thirty-nine/'
or any of them, while engaged on that instrument,
expressed any opinion on that precise question.
In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the
5 Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the Ordi-
nance of '87, inchiding the prohibition of slavery in
the Northwestern Territory. The bill for this act was
reported by one of the ''thirty-nine," Thomas Fitz-
simmons, then a member of the House of Represent a-
lOtives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its
stages without a word of opposition, and finally passed
both branches without ayes and nays, which is equiv-
alent to an unanimous passage. In this Congress
there were sixteen of the "thirty-nine" fathers who
15 framed the original Constitution. They were John
Langdon, Nicholas Oilman, Wm. S. Johnson, Roger
Sherman, Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William
Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, WilHam Patter-
son, Oeorge Clymer, Richard Bassett, Oeorge Read,
20 Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, and James Madison.
This shows that, in their understanding, no line di-
viding local from Federal authority, nor anything in
the Constitution, properly forbade Congress to pro-
hibit slavery in the Federal territory; else both their
25 fidelity to correct principle, and their oath to support
the Constitution, would have constrained them to op-
pose the prohibition.
Again, Oeorge Washington, another of the "thirty-
nine," was then President of the United States, and
30 as such, approved and signed the bill, thus completing
its validity as a law, and thus showing that, in his
understanding, no line dividing local from Federal
authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade
the Federal Oovernment to control as to slavery in
35 Federal territory.
No great while after the adoption of the original
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 39
Constitution, North Carolina ceded to the Federal
Government the country now constituting the State of
Tennessee; and a few years later Georgia ceded that
which now constitutes the States of Mississippi and
Alabama. In both deeds of cession it was made a con- 5
dition by the ceding States that the Federal Govern-
ment should not prohibit slavery in the ceded country.
Besides this, slavery was then actually in the ceded
country. Under these circumstances, Congress, on
taking charge of these countries, did not absolutely 10
prohibit slavery within them. But they did interfere
with it — take control of it — even there, to a certain
extent. In 1798, Congress organized the Territory of
Mississippi. In the act of organization they prohibited
the bringing of slaves into the Territory from any 15
place without the United States, by fine, and giving
freedom to slaves so brought. This act passed both
branches of Congress without yeas and nays. In that
Congress were three of the "thirty-nine'' who framed
the original Constitution. They w^ere John Langdon,20
George Read, and Abraham Baldwin. They all prob-
ably voted for it. Certainly they would have placed
their opposition to it upon record if, in their under-
standing, any line dividing local from Federal author-
ity, or anything in the Constitution, properly forbade 25
the Federal Government to control as to slavery in
Federal territory.
In 1803, the Federal Government purchased the
Louisiana country. Our former territorial acquisi-
tions came from certain of our own States; but this 30
Louisiana country was acquired from a foreign nation.
In 1804, Congress gave a territorial organization to
that part of it which now constitutes the State of
Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within that part, was
an old and comparatively large city. There were 35
other considerable towns and settlements, and slavery
40 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
was extensively and thoroughly intermingled with the
people. Congress did not, in the Territorial Act,
prohibit slavery; but they did interfere with it — take
control of it — in a more marked and extensive way
5 than they did in the case of Mississippi. The sub-
stance of the provision therein made in relation to
slaves was:
First. That no slave should be imported into the
Territory from foreign parts.
10 Second. That no slave should be carried into it who
had been imported into the United States since the
first day of May, 1798.
Third. That no slave should be carried into it,
except by the owner, and for his own use as a settler;
15 the penalty in all the cases being a fine upon the
violater of the law, and freedom to the slave.
This act also was passed without ayes and nays.
In the Congress which passed it there were two of
the "thirty-nine." They were Abraham Baldwin and
20 Jonathan Dayton. As stated in the case of Mississippi,
it is probable they both voted for it. They would not
have allowed it to pass without recording their oppo-
sition to it if, in their understanding, it violated either
the line properly dividing local from Federal author-
25 ity, or any provision of the Constitution.
In 1819-20 came and passed the Missouri question.
Many votes w^ere taken, by yeas and nays, in both
branches of Congress, upon the various phases of the
general question. Two of the "thirty-nine" — Rufus
30 King and Charles Pinckney — were members of that
Congress. Mr. King steadily voted for slavery prohi-
bition and against all compromises, while Mr. Pinck-
ney as steadily voted against slavery prohibition and
against all compromises. By this, Mr. King showed
35 that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from
Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution,
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 41
was violated by Congress prohibiting slavery in Fed-
eral territory; while Mr. Pinckney, by his votes,
showed that, in his understanding, there was some
sufficient reason for opposing such prohibition in that 5
case.
The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the
*Hhirty-nine/' or of any of them, upon the direct issue,
which I have been able to discover.
To enumerate the persons who thus acted as being 10
four in 1784, three in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in
1798, two in 1804, and two in 1819-20, there would be
thirty of them. But this would be counting John
Langdon, Roger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King,
and George Read each twice, and Abraham Baldwin 15
three times. The true number of those of the "thirty-
nine" whom I have shown to have acted upon the
question which, by the text, they understood better
than we, is twenty-three, leaving sixteen not shown
to have acted upon it in any way. 20
Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our " thirty-
nine" fathers "who framed the government under
which we live," who have, upon their official re-
sponsibility and their corporal oaths, acted upon the
very question which the text affirms they " understood 25
just as well, and even better, than we do now;" and
twenty-one of them — a clear majority of the whole
"th'rty-nine" — so acting upon it as to make them
guilty of gross political impropriety and wilful per-
jury if, in their understanding, any proper division 30
between local and Federal authority, or anything in.
the Constitution they had made themselves, and
sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government
to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories.
Thus tlie twenty-one acted; and, as actions speak 35
louder than words, so actions under such responsi-
bility speak still louder.
42 TH^ COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
Two of the twenty-three voted against Congressional
prohibition of slavery in the Federal Territories, in the
instances in which they acted upon the question. But
for what reasons they so voted is not known. They
5 niay have done so because they thought a proper
division of local from Federal authority, or some
provision or principle of the Constitution, stood in the
way; or they may, without any such question, have
voted against the prohibition on what appeared to
10 them to be sufficient grounds of expediency. No one
W'ho has sw^orn to support the Constitution can con-
scientiously vote for what he understands to be an
unconstitutional measure, however expedient he may
think it; but one may and ought to vote against a
15 measure which he deems constitutional if, at the same
time, he deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, w^ould be
unsafe to set down even the two who voted against
the prohibition as having done so because, in their
understanding, any proper division of local from
20 Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution,
forbade the Federal Government to control as to
slavery in Federal territory.
The remaining sixteen of the 'Hhirty-nine,'' so far
as I have discovered, have left no record of their un-
25 derstanding upon the direct question of Federal con-
trol of slavery in the Federal Territories. But there
is much reason to believe that their understanding
upon that question would not have appeared different
from that of their twenty-three compeers, had it been
30 manifested at all.
For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, 1
have purposely omitted whatever understanding may
have been manifested by any person, however distin-
guished, other than the thirty-nine fathers whoYramed
35 the original Constitution; and, for the same reason,
I have also omitted whatever understanding may have
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 43
been manifested by any of the "thirty-nine" even on
any other phase of the general question of slavery.
If we should look into their acts and declarations on
those other phases, as the foreign slave-trade, and the
morality and policy of slavery generally, it would ap- 5
pear to us that on the direct question of Federal con-
trol of slavery in Federal Territories, the sixteen, if
they had acted at all, would probably have acted just
as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were
several of the most noted anti-slavery men of those 10
times, — as Dr. Franklin, ' Alexander Hamilton, and
Gouverneur Morris, — while there was not one now
known to have been otherwise, unless it may be John
Rutledge, of South Carolina.
The sum of the whole is that of our "thirty-nine'- 15
fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-
one — a clear majority of the whole — certainly under-
stood that no proper division of local from Federal
authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade
the Federal Government to control slavery in the Fed- 20
eral Territories; while all the rest probably had the
same understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the
understanding of our fathers who framed the original
Constitution ; and the text affirms that they understood
the question "better than Vv^e." 25
But, so far, I have been considering the understand-
ing of the question manifested by the framers of the
original Constitution. In and by the original instru-
ment, a mode was provided for amending it; and, as I
have already stated, the present frame of "the govern- 30
ment under which we live" consists of that original,
and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted
since. Those who now insist that Federal control of
slavery in Federal Territories violates the Constitu-
tion, point us to the provisions which they suppose it 35
thus violates; and, I understand, they all fix upon
44 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in
the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the
Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon the fifth
amendment, which provides that "no person shall be
5 deprived of life, liberty, or property without due
process of law;" while Senator Douglas and his pecu-
liar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amend-
ment, providing that "the powers not delegated to the
United States by the Constitution are reserved to the
10 States respectively, or to the people."
Now, it so happens that these amendments were
framed by the first Congress which sat under the Con-
stitution— the identical Congress which passed the act
already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition of slavery
15 in the Northwestern Territor}^ Not only was it the
same Congress, but they were the identical, same indi-
vidual men who, at the same session, and at the same
time within the session, had under consideration, and
in progress toward maturity, these constitutional
20 amendments, and this act prohibiting slavery in all
the territory the nation then owned. The constitu-
tional amendments were introduced before, and passed
after, the act enforcing the Ordinance of '87; so that,
during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the
25 Ordinance, the constitutional amendments were also
pending.
That Congress, consisting in all of seventj^-six mem-
bers, including sixteen of the framers of the original
Constitution, as before stated, were preeminently our
30 fathers who framed that part of "the Government
under which we live,'' which is now claimed as for-
bidding the Federal Government to control slavery in
the Federal Territories.
Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this
35 day to affirm that the two things which that Congress
deliberately framed, and carried to maturity at the
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 45
same time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other?
And does not such affirmation become impudently-
absurd when coupled with the other affirmation, from
the same mouth, that those who did the two things
alleged to be inconsistent, understood whether they 5
really were inconsistent better than we — better than
he who affirms that they are inconsistent? i
It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine
framers of the original Constitution, and the seventy-
six members of the Congress which framed the amend- 10
ments thereto, taken together, do certainly include
those who may be fairly called ''our fathers who
framed the government under which we live.'' And
so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one
of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his 15
understanding, . any proper division of local from
Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution,
forbade the Federal Government to control as to
slavery in the Federal Territories. I go a step further.
I defy any one to show that any living man in the 20
whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of the
present century (and I might almost say prior to the
beginning of the last half of the present century),
declare that, in his understanding, any proper divi-
sion of local from Federal authority, or any part of 25
the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government
to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories.
To those who now so declare I give not only ''our
fathers who framed the Government under which
we live," but with them all other living men within 30
the century in which it was framed, among whom
to search, and they shall not be able to find the evi-
dence of a single man agreeing with them.
Now, and here let me guard a little against being
misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound 35
to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To
46 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
do so would be to discard all the lights of current
experience — to reject all progress, all improvement.
What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opin-
ions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should
5 do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so
clear, that even their great authority, fairly con-
sidered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely
not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they under-
stood the question better than we.
10 If any man at this day sincerely believes that a
proper division of local from Federal authority, or
any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal
Government to control as to slavery in the Federal
Territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his
15 position by all truthful evidence and fair argument
which he can. But he has no right to mislead others,
who have less access to history, and less leisure to
study it, into the false belief that "our fathers who
framed the Government under which we live" were
20 of the same opinion — thus substituting falsehood
and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument.
If any man at this day sincerely believes "our fathers
who framed the Government under which we live'*
used and applied principles, in other cases, which
25 ought to have led them to understand that a proper
division of local from Federal authority, or some part
of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government
to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories,
he is right to say so. But he should, at the same time,
30 brave the responsibility of declaring that, in his
opinion, he understands their principles better than
they did themselves; and especially should he not
shirk that responsibility by asserting that they " under-
'stood the question just as well, and even better, than
35 we do now."
But enough. Let all who believe that " our fathers
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 47
who framed the government under which we Hve
understood this question just as well, and even better,
than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they
acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask — all
Republicans desire — in relation to slavery. As those 5
fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an
evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and pro-
tected only because of and so far as its actual presence
among us makes that toleration and protection a
necessity. Let all the guaranties those fathers gave 10
it be not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained.
For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far
as I know or believe, they will be content.
And now, if they would listen — as I suppose they
will not — I would address a few words to the South- 15
ern people.
I would say to them: You consider yourselves a
reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in
the general qualities of reason and justice you are not
inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of 20
us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as
reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws.
You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers,
but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." In all
your contentions with one another, each of you deems 25
an unconditional condemnation of " Black Republican-
ism" as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed,
such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable
prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you to be
admitted or permitted to speak at all. 30
Now, can you, or not, be prevailed upon to pause
and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or
even to yourselves?
Bring forward your charges and specifications, and
then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify. 35
You say we are sectional. We deny it. That
48 THB COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you.
You produce your proof; and what is it? Why,
that our party has no existence in your section — gets
no votes in your section. The fact is substantially
5 true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then in
case we should, without change of principle, begin
to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease
to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion;
and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are,
10 you will probably soon find that we have ceased to
be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section
this very year. You wiU then begin to discover,
as the truth plainly is, that your proof does not touch
the issue. The fact that we get no votes in your sec-
15 tion is a fact of your making, and not of ours. And
if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily
yours, and remains so until you show that we repel
you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do
repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the
20 fault is ours; but this brings j^ou to where you ought
to have started — to discussion of the right or wrong
of our principle. If our principle, put in practice,
would wrong your section for the benefit of ours,
or for any other object, then our principle, and we
25 with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and
denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question
of whether our principle, put in practice, would
wrong your section; and so meet us as if it were pos-
sible that something may be said on our side. Do
30 you accept the challenge? No? Then you really believe
that the principle which " our fathers who framed the
Government under which we live'' thought so clearly
right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again,
upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as
35 to demand your condemnation without a moment's
consideration.
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 49
Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warn-
ing against sectional parties given by Washington
in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years before
Washington gave that warning, he had, as President
of the United States, approved and signed an act 5
of Congress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the
Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy
of the Government upon that subject up to and at the
very moment he penned that warning; and about
one year after he penned it, he wrote Lafayette that 10
he considered that prohibition a wise measure, ex-
pressmg in the same connection his hope that we should
at some time have a confederacy of free States.
Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism
has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning 15
a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands
against you? Could Washington himself speak,
would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon
us, who sustain his policy, or upon you, who repudiate
it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we 20
commend it to you, together with his example point-
ing to the right application of it.
But you say you are conservative — eminently
conservative — while we are revolutionary, destructive,
or something of the sort. What is conservatism? 25
Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the
new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the
identical old policy on the point in controversy which
was adopted by "our fathers who framed the Gov-
ernment under which we live;'' while you with one 30
accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old
policy, and insist upon substituting something new. ]
True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that
substitute shall be. You are divided on new proposi-
tions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting 35
and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some
50 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
of you are for reviving the foreign slave-trade; some
for a congressional slave-code for the Territories;
some for Congress forbidding the Territories to pro-
hibit slavery within their limits; some for maintain-
5ing slavery in the Territories through the judiciary;
some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one
man would enslave another, no third man should
object," fantastically called '^Popular Sovereignty;"
but never a man among you is in favor of Federal
10 prohibition of slavery in Federal Territories, accord-
ing to the practice of "our fathers who framed the
Government under which we live." Not one of all
your various plans can show a precedent or an advo-
cate in the century within which our Government
15 originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of
conservatism for yourselves, and your charge of
destructiveness against us, are based on the most
clear and stable foundations.
Again, you say we have made the slavery question
20 more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it.
We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny that
we made it so. It was not we, but you, who dis-
carded the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and
still resist, your innovation; and thence comes the
25 greater prominence of the question. Would you
have that question reduced to its former proportions?
Go back to that old policy. What has been will be
' again, imder the same conditions. If you would
have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts
30 and policy of the old times.
You charge that we stir up insurrections among your
slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Har-
per's Ferry! John Brown! ! John Brown was no
Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single
35 Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any
member of our party is guilty in that matter, you
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 51
know it, or you do not know it. If you do know it,
you are inexcusable for not designating the man and
proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are
inexcusable to assert it, and especially to persist in
the assertion after you have tried and failed to make 5
the proof. You need not be told that persisting in
a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply
malicious slander.
Some of you admit that no Republican designedly
aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair, but 10
still insist that our doctrines and declarations neces-
sarily lead to such results. We do not believe it.
We know we hold no doctrine, and make no declara-
tion, which were not held to and made by ^'our fathers
who framed the Government under which we live." 15
You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair.
When it occurred, some important State elections were
near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the
belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could
get an advantage of us in those elections. The elec-20
tions came, and your expectations were not quite ful-
filled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself
at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not
much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Re-
publican doctrines and declarations are accompanied 25
with a continual protest against any interference
whatever with your slaves, or with you about your
slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to
revolt. True, we do, in common with "our fathers
who framed the Government under which we live/' 30
declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves
do not hear us declare even this. For anything we
say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a
Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact,
generally know it but for your misrepresentations of 35
us in their hearing. In your political contests among
52 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
yourselves, each faction charges the other with sym^
pathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give
point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to
simply be insurrection, blood, and thunder among the
5 slaves.
Slave insurrections are no more common now than
they were before the Republican party was organ-
ized. What induced the Southampton insurrection,
twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three times
10 as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You
can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the con-
clusion that Southampton was "got up by Black Re-
publicanism." In the present state of things in the
United States, I do not think a general, or even a very
15 extensive, slave insurrection is possible. The indis-
pensable concert of action cannot be obtained. The
slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor
can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it.
The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels;
20 but there neither are, nor can be supplied, the indis-
pensable connecting trains.
Much is said by Southern people about the affection
of slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part
of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could
25 scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty indi-
viduals before some one of them, to save the Hfe of a
favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is
the rule; and the slave revolution in Hayti was not
an exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar
30 circumstances. The gunpowder plot of British history,
though not connected with slaves, was more in point.
in that case, only about twenty were admitted to the
secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a
friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by conse-
35quence, averted the calamity. Occasional poisonings
from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 53
in the field, and local revolts extending to a score or
so, will continue to occur as the natural results of
slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I
think, cah happen in this country for a long time.
Whoever much fears, or much hopes, for such an 5
event, will be alike disappointed.
In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years
ago, ''It is still in our power to direct the process of
emancipation and deportation peaceably, and in such
slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; 10
and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white
laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself
on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held
up."
Mr. Jeffersorf did not mean to say, nor do I, that 15
the power of emancipation is in the Federal Govern-
ment. He spoke of Virginia; and, as to the power of
emancipation, I speak of the slaveholding States
only.
The Federal Government, however, as we insist, has 20
the power of restraining the extension of the institu-
tion— the power to insure that a slave insurrection
shall never occur on any American soil which is now
free from slavery.
John Brow^n's effort was peculiar. It was not a 25
slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to
get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves re- i
fused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that
the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough
it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, 30
corresponds with the many attempts, related in history,
at the assassination of kings and emperors. An en-
thusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he
fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate
them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little 35
else than in his own execution. Orsini's attempt on
54 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
Louis Napoleon, and John Brown's attempt at Harper's
Ferry, were, in their philosophy, precisely the same.
The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one
case, and on New England in the other, does not dis-
5 prove the sameness of the two things.
And how much would it avail you, if you could, by
the use of John Brown, Helper's Book, and the like,
break up the Republican organization? Human action
can be modified to some extent, but human nature can-
10 not be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling
against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a
million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that
judgment and feeling — that sentiment — by breaking
up the political organization which rallies around it.
15 You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which
has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest
fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by
forcing the sentiment w^hich created it out of the peace-
ful channel of the ballot-box into some other channel?
20 What would that other channel probably be? Would
the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged
by the operation?
But you will break up the Union rather than submit
to a denial of your Constitutional rights.
25 That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would
be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing,
by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some
right plaiQly written down in the Constitution. But
we are proposing no such thing.
30 When you make these declarations you have a
specific and well understood allusion to an assumed
constitutional right of yours to take slaves into the
Federal Territories, and to hold them there as property.
But no such right is specifically written in the Con-
35Stitution. That instrument is literall}^ silent about
any such right, We^ on the contrary, deny that such
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 55
a right has any existence in the Constitution, even
by imphcation.
Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will
destroy the Government, unless j^ou be allowed to
construe and force the Constitution as you please, on 5
all points in dispute between you and ue. You will
rule or ruin in all events.
This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you
will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed
Constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. 10
But waiving the lawyer's distinction between dictum
and decision, the court has decided the question for
you in a sort of way. The court has substantially
said, it is your constitutional right to take slaves into
the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as 15
property.
When I say the decision was made in a sort of
way, I mean it was made in a divided court, by a
bare majority of the judges, and they not quite agree-
ing with one another in the reasons for making it; 20
that it is so made as that its avowed supporters
disagree with one another about its meaning, and that
it was mainly based upon a mistaken statement
of fact — the statement in the opinion that "the right
of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly 25
affimied in the Constitution."
An inspection of the Constitution will show that
the right of property in a slave is not "distinctly and
expressly affirmed" in it. Bear in mind, the judges
do not pledge their judicial opinion that such right 30
is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; but they
pledge their veracity that it is "distinctly and ex-
pressly" affirmed there — "distinctly," that is, not
mingled with anything else — "expressly," that is, in i
words meaning just that, without the aid of any .35
inference, and susceptible of no other meaning.
56 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that
Buch right is affirmed in the instrument by implica-
tion, it would be open to others to show that neither
the word "slave" nor " slavery '^ is to be found in the
5 Constitution, nor the word '^property" even, in any
connection with language alluding to the things slave,
or slavery; and that wherever in that instrument
the slave is alluded to, he is called a "person;'^ and
wherever his master's legal right in relation to him is
10 alluded to, it is spoken of as " service or labor which
may be due " — as a debt payable in service or labor.
Also it would be open to show, by contemporaneous
history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and
slavery, instead of speaking of them, was employed on
15 purpose to exclude from the Constitution the idea that
there could be property in man.
To show all this is easy and certain.
When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be
brought to their notice, is it not reasonable to ex-
20 pect that they will withdraw the mistaken statement,
and reconsider the conclusion based upon it?
And then it is to be remembered that " our fathers
who framed the Government under which we live" —
the men who made the Constitution — decided this
25 same Constitutional question in our favor long ago :
decided it without a division among themselves when
making the decision; without division among them-
selves about the meaning of it after it was made, and
so far as any evidence is left, without basmg it upon
30 any mistaken statement of facts.
Under all these circumstances, do you really feel
yourself justified to break up this Government unless
such a court decision as yours is shall be at once sub-
mitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political
35 action?
But you will not abide the election of a Republican
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 57
president! In that supposed event, you say, you
will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great
crime of having destroyed it will be upon us \
That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear,
and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, 5
or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"
To be sure, what the robber demanded of me — my
money — was my own; and I had a clear right to keep
it; but it was no more my own than my vote is my
own; and the threat of death to me, to extort my 10
money, and the threat of destruction to the Union,
to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in
principle.
A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly
desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy 15
shall be at peace, and in harmony one with another.
Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even
though much provoked, let us do nothing through
passion and ill temper. Even though the Southern
people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly 20
consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our
deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judg-
ing by all they say and do, and by the subject and
nature of their controversy with us, let us determine
if we can, what will satisfy them. 25
Will they be satisfied if the Territories be uncon-
ditionally surrendered to them? We know they will
not. In all their present complaints against us, the
Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and
insurrections are the rage now. Will it satisfy them 30
if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions
and insurrections? We know it will not. We so
know, because we know we never had anything to do
with invasions and insurrections; and yet this total
abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and 35
the denunciation.
58 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
The question recurs, What will satisfy them?
Simply this: we must not only let them alone, but
we must somehow convince them that we do let them
alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task.
5 We have been so trying to convince them from the
very beginning of our organization, but with no suc-
cess. In all our platforms and s}3eeches w^e have con-
stantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but
this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike
10 unavailing to convince them is the fact that they have
never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb
them.
These natural and apparently adequate means all
failing, what will convince them? This, and this only:
15 cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling
it right. And this must be done thoroughly — done in
ads as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated
— we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Sena-
tor Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and
20 enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is
wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits,
or in private. We must arrest and return their fugi-
tive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down
our Free-State constitutions. The whole atmosphere
25 must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to
slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their
troubles proceed from us.
I am quite aware they do not state their case pre-
cisely in this way. Most of them would probably say
30 to us, "Let us alone; do nothing to us, and say what
you please about slavery." But we do let them alone,
— have never disturbed them, — so that, after all, it is
what we say which dissatisfies them. They will con-
tinue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying.
35 I am also aware they have not as yet in terms de-
manded the overthrow of our Free-State constitutions.
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS 59
Yet those constitutions declare the wrong of slavery
with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings
against it; and when all these other sayings shall have
been silenced, the overthrow of these constitutions
will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the 5
demand. It is nothing to the contrary that they do
not demand the whole of this just now. Demanding
what they do, and for the reason they do, they can
voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation.
Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally right 10
and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a
full national recognition of it as a legal right and a
social blessing.
Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground
save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery 15
is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions
against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced
and swept away. If it is right, w^e cannot justly ob-
ject to its nationality — its universality; if it is wrong,
they cannot justly insist upon its extension — its en- 20
largement. All they ask we could readily grant, if we
thought slavery right ; all we ask they could as readily
grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it
right and our thinking it wrong is the precise fact
upon which depends the whole controversy. Thinking 25
it right, as they do, they are not to blame for desiring
its fuU recognition as being right; but thinking it
wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we cast
our votes with their view, and against our own? In
view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, 30
can we do this?
Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afTord to
let it alone where it is, because that much is due to
the necessity arising from its actual presence in the
nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, 35
allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to
'60 THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
overrun us here in these free States? If our sense of
duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fear-
lessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none
of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are
5 so industriously plied and belabored — contrivances
such as groping for some middle ground between the
right and the wrong : vain as the search for a man who
should be neither a living man nor a dead man; suck
as a policy of "don't care" on a question about which
10 all true men do care; such as Union appeals be-
seeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, re-
versing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners,
but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations
to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Wash-
isington said and undo what Washington did.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false
accusations against us, nor frightened from it by
menaces of destruction to the government, nor of
dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right
20 makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare
to do our duty as we understand it.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY
I. The Speeches on Copyright
1. How Macaulay impressed reporters is seen in the testi-
mony of Mr. Downing of the London " Daily News ":
" Vehemence of thought, vehemence of language, vehemence
of manner, were his chief characteristics. The listener might
almost fancy he heard ideas and words gurgling in the speaker's
throat for priority of utterance. There was nothing graduated
or undulating about him. He plunged at once into the heart
of the matter, and continued his loud resounding pace from
beginning to end, without halt or pause. This vehemence
and volume made Macaulay the terror of the reporters; and
when he engaged in a subject outside their ordinary experience,
they were fairly nonplused by the display of names, and dates,
and titles. He was not a long-winded speaker. In fact, his
earnestness was so great that it would have failed under a very
long effort."
Where in these two speeches do you imagine that these
characteristics were exemplified?
2. Sir Leslie Stephen remarks: " Clearness is the first of the
cardinal virtues of style; and nobody ever wrote more clearly
than Macaulay. He sacrifices much, it is true, in order to obtain
it. He proves that two and two make four with a pertinacity
that would make him dull, if it were not for his abundance of
brilliant illustration. He always remembers the principle which
should guide a barrister in addressing a jury. He has not merely
to exhibit his proofs, but to hammer them into the heads of his
audience by incessant repetition." Where do you find this
principle illustrated in the two speeches on copyright?
3. Sir Richard Jebb writes: " Macaulay had a wonderful
fulness and variety of knowledge. His vivid imagination,
drawing on the immense stores which his prodigious memory
held ready for use at any mom.ent, gave him an almost unrivalled
61
62 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY
command of brilliant illustration. Facts, images, analogies
crowded upon his mind whenever he desired to enforce an
argument or embellish a statement." What passages in the
speeches contain these facts, images, and analogies?
4. A Belgian writer says:
** Macaulay's speeches were distinguished, indeed, much less
by grace of expression, than by his lucidity, his arrangement
of arguments, the brilliancy of his st^de, the vehemence and
irony of his attacks. He stood motionless, talked rapidly, so
rapidly that he was compared to an express train that did not
stop even at the principal stations, and his voice, strong but
metallic, possessed neither the variety of tone nor the delicacy
of modulation by which masters of oratory have been able to
produce their great effects."
Where in particular do you suppose the qualities mentioned
in the first sentence were most conspicuous in these speeches?
5. A student of Macaulay passes this judgment: " His parlia-
mentary career proves his capacit}' sufficiently, though want of
the physical qualifications, and of exclusive devotion to political
success, prevented him, as perha])S a want of subtlety or flex-
ibility of mind would have always prevented him, from attain-
ing excellence as a debater." Look through the account of the
debate of 1842 in the Introduction to see if you find anj?^ sign
of this want.
6. Sir Richard Jebb declares that Macaulay's style is that
of the born orator:
' There is in it a sustained vivacity and rapidity which at
once declare this. Macaulay imparts to written speech much
of the impetus of oratory. . . . Oratory . . . implies an inward
fire, a glow and movement of the spirit, a powerful and sincere
emotion which the speaker can communicate to the hearers.
. . . This oratorical character of Macaulay's style may be
illustrated by one of its salient and familiar traits: I mean,
his habit of placing very short sentences between his longer
periods. . . . Such alternations of the long and short sentence
correspond to a certain surging and subsidence of thought and
feeling in the orator's mind."
Examine several paragraphs to see if this trait appears in the
speeches on copyright.
7. Select the paragraphs which you think most oratorical or
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 63
eloquent. Either memorize them and deUver them to the class,.
or read them aloud to the class, as your teacher directs.
8. State in one paragraph the substance of the speech of
1841; of 1842.
9. Embody the central idea of each paragraph in a single
sentence. Does Macaulay himself use any summarizing sen-
tences? What words, phrases, or sentences does he intro-
duce to show the relation between successive paragraphs? Do
paragraphs 2 and 3 of the first speech present a contrast? (This
study of sentences, paragraphs, and coherence of structure
may be carried to any length desired.)
10. Of Macaulay's second speech his biographer relates that
" when he resumed his seat. Sir Robert Peel walked across the
floor, and assured him that the last twenty minutes had radically
altered his own views on the law of copyright." What para-
graphs do you think produced that effect? If you had been
sitting in the hall and inclined to favor the bill of each year,
what would have been your state of mind after he had finished
each section of his speech?
11. Macaulay was a short man with a broad chest. Look
at his portrait, and note the eyes, which were said to express
deep thought and meaning. A reporter on the London " Stand-
ard " says of his bearing during a speech:
** He used scarcely any action. He would turn round on his
heel, and lean slightly on the table; but there was nothing like
demonstrative or dramatic action. He spoke with great rapid-
ity; and there was very little inflection in the voice, which,
however, in itself was not unmusical. It was somewhat monot-
onous, and seldom rose or fell."
On the basis of this quotation and of sections 1-6, draw a
portrait of the ideal orator or debater and show what features
of the portrait were possessed by Macaulay and in which he
was lacking.
12. Name five or six famous orations delivered during Mac-
aulay's public life, with the occasion and results of each. Treat
five orations of earlier times in the same way. Treat five ora-
tions by living men in the same way.
13. Describe the status of the debate when Macaulay delivered
his first speech. What was his purpose in speaking?
14. Many of Macaulay's arguments may be regarded as
64 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY
arguments from example; that is, a general statement or con-
clusion arrived at after observing a number of examples of the
class about which the statement is made. The most valuable
tests for such arguments are the following:
a. Are enough examples examined; i.e., is the relative size
of the unobserved part of the class so small as to warrant
the generalization?
h. Are the members presented fair examples of the class?
c. Does the arguer make it reasonably certain that there are
no or few exceptions?
d. Is it highly probable that such a general statement is
true?
15. Apply these tests to the proof for the following state-
ments:
Copyright is a nullity to the author, p. 10, 1. 25.
The fashion of thinking and writing changes, p. 13, 1. 25.
The family of the author will not be enriched by copyright,
p. 14 1. 8.
Copyright will lead to the suppression or mutilation of valu-
able works, p. 16, 1. 1.
(You may gain some assistance from the refutation used by
Lord Mahon, pp. 67, 68).
16. Select arguments from example in Macaulay's second
speech, and to apply to them the tests used above.
17. How does Macaulay prove that the question under debate
is one of expediency rather than of justice?
18. What parts of Macaulay's two speeches are refutation?
How does he attack his opponents? Compare his method
with Lord Mahon' s.
19. Do you find in Macaulay's speeches all of the parts of a
classical oration, such as one of Cicero's: exordium, status,
statement of facts, argument, refutation, peroration?
20. Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, in replying to Macaulay, objected
that Macaulay had not grappled with the great examples
adduced in favor of the bill, such as Wordsworth and Campbell.
Is this a strong objection?
21. Look at the refutation employed by Lord Mahon as seen
in the brief on pp. 66-69. Does he convince you that Macaulay
has argued fallaciously?
22. Look over the refutation brought forward in the speeches
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 65
summarized in the Introduction, pp. xvi-xLx. Does any of it
shake any of Macaulay's arguments?
23. In the second debate summarized in the Introduction on
pp. xvii-xx trace the steps by which the weakness of Macaulay's
proposed amendment was made prominent. What part of the
debate do you think had most influence in securing the adoption
of the addition of seven years after the author's death to the
term of copyright?
24. On the model of the brief of Lord Mahon's speech, pp.
66-69, with the assistance of the material in the Introduction,
prepare an introduction for Macaulay's first speech on the
copyright. Be sure you state the proposition precisely, and
that you find the issues.
25. On the same model prepare the brief proper.
26. Prepare a complete brief for Macaulay's second speech.
27. In the volume containing all of Macaulay's speeches,
(see p. xxi) select one that you especially like and compare
it with one of the copyright speeches according to a carefully
prepared plan.
28. Imagine that Talfourd, Mahon, and Macaulay are walk-
ing in a park along the Thames, discussing the duration of
copyright. Write put the conversation.
29. Imagine that you were a member of the British parlia-
ment in 1911, when the present British copyright bill was
passed. The important provisions of that bill are: first, " The
term for which copyright shall subsist shall, except as other-
wise expressly pro vided by this Act, be the life of the author
and a period of fifty years after his death," and, secondly,
" Where the author of a work is the first owner of the copy-
right therein, no assignment, and no grant of any interest therein,
made by him (otherwise than by will) after the passing of this
Act, shall be operative to vest in the assignee or grantee any
rights with respect to the copyright in the work beyond the
expiration of twenty-five years from the author's death," —
which means that the author cannot sell the copyright for a term
of more than twenty-five years after his death. Make a speech
in favor of this bill.
30. Ascertain the period during' which a patent is good. Can
you justify the difference between it and that of copyright?
66 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY
Brief of Lord Mahon's Speec
Delivered in the House of Commons, April 6, 1842
Resolved: That the period of copyright shall endure for the
natural life of the author and for the further term of twenty-
five years commencing at the time of his death.
Introduction
I. History and Origin of the Question.
A. Copyright was of little importance for two centuries after
the invention of printing, for
1. Readers were few.
2. Patronage then supported authors.
B. Copyright became a question of interest under Sir Robert
Walpole, for
1. Patronage then came to an end.
2. A reading public began to arise.
C. At the commencement of the reign of George IH. authors
enjoyed according to common law a perpetual copyright,
for
1. Though the right had been inadvertently limited by
the statute of Queen Anne in 1709, courts of equity
for many j-ears continued to grant injunctions for
protection of cop^Tights from seventy to one hundred
years old.
D. Not till 1774 did the House of Lords by a vote of six to
five decide that under the law of 1709 copyright ex-
tended only to fourteen years, and to fourteen more
should the author be surviving at the close of the first
term.
E. The law of 1814 extended the period to twenty-eight years
or the life of the author.
[The following sections, usual in a model introduction, are
not found in the speech.
II. Definitions. As the question had been debated for five
years, no definitions were considered necessary.
III. Admitted, Waived, and Irrelevant Matter. Omitted
for the same reason.
IV. Issues. None stated, but from the course of the speech
it is apparent that he considered the following:
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 67
A. Is copyright just?
B. Will the proposed law be of any use to the author?
1. Will it lead to suppression of his works?
2. Will it increase his income?
C. Will it raise the price of books to the pubUc?
D. Will it encourage authorship?
E. Is it favored by the classes of the public affected?]
Brief Proper ♦
I. Refutation. The argument that the moment an author
puts his thoughts on paper and delivers them to the world his
property therein utterly ceases, is unjust, for
A. M. Lamartine, of the French Chamber of Deputies, holds a
contrary view.
B. An author obviously has as much right of property in his
ideas as the man who reclaims a field from the waste has
to the field.
II. Refutation. The eloquent argument of Mr. Macaulay
that the proposed law will entail a great risk of the suppression
of valuable works is unproved, for
A. The case of Richardson's grandson does not support this
view, for
1. His objection to reading the novels himself does not
prove that he desired to prohibit all mankind from
reading them.
2. His brother, whose concurrence was necessary, would
not have agreed to the suppression.
B. The case of Bos well's son does not support this view, for
1. There is no evidence that he wished to suppress the
" Life of Johnson."
2. The work was in too general circulation for the sup-
pression to be effective.
C. It is based on the fallacy that it is as easy to suppress a work
spread abroad by the tens of thousands as a work in
manuscript.
D. The proposed law will empower the Privy Council Judicial
Committee to licetise works for publication in case of
attempted suppression.
III. Refutation. The argument of Mr. Macaulay that the ex-
tension would be useless to authors themselves is unfounded, for
68 QUESTIOXS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY
A. The case of Dr. Johnson does not support it, for
1. Dr. Johnson declared in favor of copyright for a period
not shorter than a hundred years.
2. The proposed law would have enabled him to marry
again.
IV. Refutation. The i:)roposal that the term of copyright
be left within the discretion of the Privy Council is inadvisable,
for
A. Lord Campbell, the proposer, no longer favors it.
B. Rival claims could not be settled by the Privy Council,
for
1. The Councillors are not competent judges of literature.
2. Their judgm.ent would be warped by political considera-
tions.
V. Refutation. The argument that the proposed law will tend
to increase the price of books is unsound, for
A. Books containing maps and engravings will thereby become
cheaper.
B. Booksellers know that their interests would be better pro-
moted by low prices to the multitudes, for
1. The demand for useful and economical books has thrown
the desire for splendid books quite into the back-
ground.
VI. A much more complete mode of remuneration than that
proposed in the bill ought to be provided for literary men, for
A. They cannot be rewarded by places and pensions.
B. The fairest remuneration is the patronage of the public,
for
1. It gives the greatest reward to the best books.
2. It does not tax the idle for the studious, for
a. Only readers will buy books.
C. Authors should be encouraged to write for a permanent
and enduring fame, for
1. To write in accordance with the literary standards
of the hour produces merely ephemeral works.
D. There has been a gradual extension of the tenn of copy-
right all over Europe, for
1. Russia and Spain have increased the term.
2. France grants ten years absolutely after the death of
the author and twenty years if he leaves kindred.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 69
3. France is now trying to extend the period to fifty
years after death.
E. England should take the lead in such encouragement, for
1. The distresses of men of genius have a peculiar claim
on our sympathy.
2. Such encouragement will help the nation at large, for
a. Sou they 's " Life of Nelson " has increased patri-
otic pride in our navy.
VII. The leading men among authors, publishers, printers,
stationers, have petitioned the House to adopt the bill as it
now stands.
Conclusion
Since copyright is just, since the proposed law will be of use
to authors, since it will not materially increase the price of
books to the public, since it will encourage authorship, and since
it is favored by the classes of the public affected, the term of
copyright should endure for the natural life of the author and
for the further term of twenty-five years commencing at the
time of his death.
II. The Cooper Institute Address
1. William H. Herndon, Lincoln's law partner for twenty
years, thus describes Lincoln's manner in speaking:
" When standing erect he was six feet four inches high. He
was lean in flesh and ungainly in figure. Aside from the sad,
pained look due to habitual melancholy, his face had no char-
acteristic or fixed expression. He was thin through the chest,
and hence slightly stoop-shouldered. When he arose to address
courts, juries, or crowds of people, his body inclined forward
to a slight degree. At first he was very awkward, and it seemed
a real labor to adjust himself to his surroundings. He struggled
for a time under a feeling of apparent diffidence and sensitive-
ness, and these only added to his awkwardness. I have often
seen and sympathized with Mr. Lincoln during these moments.
When he began speaking, his voice was shrill, piping, and
unpleasant. His manner, his attitude, his dark, yellow face,
wrinkled and dry, his oddity of pose, his diffident movements —
everything seemed to be against him, but only for a short
time.
70 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY
" As he proceeded he became somewhat animated, and to keep
in harmony with his growing warmth his hands relaxed their
grasp and fell to his side. Presently he clasped the ii in front
of him, interlocking his fingers, one thumb meanwhile chasing
another. His speech now requiring more emphatic utterance,
his fingers unlocked and his hands fell apart. His left arm was
thro\\Ti behind, the back of his hand resting against his body,
his right hand seeking his side. By this time he had gained
sufficient composure, and his real speech began. He did not
gesticulate as much with his hands as with his head. He
used the latter frequently, throwing it with vim this way and
that. This movement was a significant one when he sought to
enforce his statement. It sometimes came with a quick jerk,
as if throwing sparks into combustible material. He never
sawed the air nor rent space into tatters and rags as some
orators do. He never acted for stage effect. He was cool,
considerate, reflective, — in time self-possessed and self-reliant.
" As he moved along in his speech he became freer and less
uneasy in his movements; to that extent he was graceful. He
had a perfect naturalness, a strong individuality; and to that
extent he was dignified. He despised glitter, show, set forms,
and shams. He spoke with effectiveness and to move the judg-
ment as well as the emotions of men. There was a world of
meaning and emphasis in the long, bony finger of his right
hand as he dotted the ideas on the minds of his hearers. Some-
times, to express joy or pleasure, he would raise both hands at
an angle of about fifty degrees, the palms upw^ard, as if desirous
of embracing the spirit of that which he loved. If the senti-
ment was one of detestation — denunciation of slavery, for
example — both arms, thrown upward and fists clenched, swept
through the air, and he expressed an execration that was truly
sublime. This was one of his most effective gestures, and sig-
nified most vividly a fixed determination to drag down the object
of his hatred and trample it in the dust.
" He always stood squarely on his feet, toe even with toe;
that is, he never put one foot before the other. He neither
touched nor leaned on anything for support. He made but
few changes in his positions and attitudes. He never ranted,
never walked backward and forward on the platform. To
ease his arms he frequently caught hold, with his left hand,
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 71
of the lapel of his coat, keeping his thumb upright and leaving
his right hand free to gesticulate. The designer of the monu-
ment recently erected in Chicago has happily caught him in
just that attitude. As he proceeded with his speech the exer-
cise of his vocal organs altered somewhat the tone of his voice.
It lost in a measure its former acute and shrilling pitch, and
mellowed into a more harmonious and pleasant sound. His
form expanded, and, notwithstanding the sunken breast, he
rose up a splendid and imposing figure. His little gray eyes
flashed in a face aglow with the fire of his profound thoughts;
and his uneasy movements and diffident manner sunk them-
selves beneath the w^ave of righteous indignation that came
sweeping over him. Such was Lincoln the orator."
Compare this description with the accounts in the Intro-
duction,— (a) At what points in the speech do you think, if
you had been present, you might have seen " the kindling eye
and mirth-provoking look " mentioned in the " Tribune "
account? (b) At what points do you think he used his three
chief gestures? (c) At what points do you think he was " a
splendid and imposing figure "?
2. " Mr. Lincoln's speech excited frequent and irrepressible
applause," the " Tribune " reported the next morning. " His
occasional repetition of the text never failed to provoke a burst
of cheers and audible smiles." Can you account for this effect?
3. " The smiles, the laughter, the outburst of applause which
greeted and emphasized the speaker's telling points, showed
Mr. Lincoln that his arguments m.et ready acceptance." Go
through the speech, picking out the " telHng points " which
you think were thus greeted.
4. The New York " Evening Post " in its editorial notice
the next day, February 28, 1860, said: " We have made room
for Mr. Lincoln's speech notwithstanding the pressure of other
matters, and our readers will see that it is well worthy of the
deep attention with which it was heard. That part of it in
which the speaker places the Republican party on the very
ground occupied by the framers of our constitution and fathers
of our republic strikes us as particularly forcible." What
portion is this? Why is it particularly forcible?
5. " Lincoln appealed alike to scholars, men of business, and
the common people, for such clearness of statement and irref-
72 QUESTIOXS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY
ragable proofs had not been known since the death of Webster.''
Point out passages that you think would appeal to each of these
classes.
6. What classes of people did Lincoln have in mind in pre-
paring the speech? How did he hope to influence them?
7. Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln's biographers, declare: "The
most impressive, as well as the most valuable, feature of
Lincoln's address was its concluding portion." Think out all
the reasons you can for this statement.
8. Make a report on Cooper Institute, why it was founded,
when it was built, and some of the famous occasions it has
seen.
9. Macaulay's nephew declares that " if a debate was in
prospect he would turn the subject over while he paced his
chamber or tramped the streets. Each thought as it arose in
his mind, embodied itself in phrases, and clothed itself in an
appropriate drapery of images, instances, and quotations;
and when, in the course of his speech, the thought recurred,
all the words which gave it point and beauty spontaneously
recurred with it." Look through the Introduction and sections
19 and 20 below to determine how Lincoln's method of pre-
paring a speech differed from ]\Iacaulay's and wh}-?
10. Is the tone of Lincoln's speech stiff or informal? Is it
concihatory or aggressive? How does it compare in these
respects with Macaulay's speeches?
11. Janies Ford Rhodes in his " History of the I'nited States "
avers: " Lincoln's bursts of eloquence, under the influence
of noble passion, are still read with delight by the lovers of
humanity and constitutional government." Do you find any
such bursts in this speech? Vv^hat is the most impressive sen-
tence? Look through some of his other famous speeches and
addresses for examples. Memorize from this speech and other
speeches passages for delivery before the class.
12. Mention the occasion and significance of five orations
delivered during Lincoln's life; of five American orations
before his day; of five since his day.
13. One student thinks that Lincoln's '' simple and forcible
vocabulary was due to the study of the Bible and Shakespeare."
What allusions to or quotations from either do you find in this
speech?
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 73
14. Compile a list of words in the speech that you do not
understand. Compare this list with a similar one compiled
from one of Macaulay's speeches.
15. " The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all
taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe
that all their troubles proceed from us." p. 58, 1. 24. Does this
figure help to make clear Lincoln's meaning? Select other
figures from the speech, and compare them with an equal num-
ber from Macaulay's. What differences do you note?
16. How does Lincoln make clear to the reader or listener the
fact that he is passing from one division of his speech to the
next?
17. Can you sum up the whole speech in a single sentence?
18. It has been said that a chief characteristic of this speech
is precision of statement. What sentences in particular seem
to you to say no more and no less than Lincoln intended? Does
he use technical words to secure exactness?
19. "A single, easy, simple sentence of plain Anglo-Saxon
words contains a chapter of history that, in some instances,
has taken da^/s of labor to verify and which must have cost
the author months of investigation to acquire." What sentences
do you select as illustrative of this statement by the first
editors?
20. " No one who has not actually attempted to verify its
details can understand the patient research and historical labor
which it embodies. The history of our earlier politics is scattered
through numerous journals, statutes, pamphlets, and letters;
and these are defective in completeness and accuracy of state-
ment, and in indices and tables of contents. Neither can any
one who has not traveled over the precise ground appreciate
the accuracy of every trivial detail, or the self-denying impar-
tiality with which Mr. Lincoln has turned from the testimony
of ' the Fathers,' on the general question of slavery, to present
the single question which he discusses." So state the first
editors of Lincoln's speech. What paragraphs, do you think,
show impartiality in presenting evidence and in dealing with
his opponent?
21. Look carefully through the brief of Douglas's speech
given on pp. 75-78 and the excerpt from it, pp. 78-79. If
possible, look up his Hfe in a large history of the United States
74 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY
or a life of Lincoln. Compare him with Lincoln as an
orator and debater.
22. Resolved: That Lincoln was a greater debater than
Macaulay. Let the class take sides on this question and argue
it out.
23. By means of the Introduction trace the long rivalry
between Douglas and Lincoln, making clear the clash in their
views on slavery. What was the chief point of difference
between Douglas and Lincoln throughout their long fight?
24. At Lincoln's first inauguration Douglas held Lincoln's
tall silk hat while the president delivered his inaugural. Imagine
them in private conversation afterward talking over previous
encounters. Write out the conversation.
25. Using the matter in the Introduction under " Lincoln
and Slavery," together with Lincoln's own speech, draw up a
complete introduction to a brief on the subject developed by
Lincoln in pp. 35-46. Be careful to state the proposition
precisely.
26. Prepare a brief on Lincoln's speech, pp. 35-46, on the
model of the one of Senator Douglas, pp. 75-78.
27. Study the brief of Douglas's speech and the excerpt from
it, pp. 75-79. Does he or Lincoln furnish the more convincing
proof of the statement in the " text "?
28. Apply to Lincoln's speech, pp. 35-46, the tests for argu-
ment from example given on p. 64.
29. Reduce to the form of a brief, pp. 47-57, phrasing as much
of it as you think proper as refutation. What is Lincoln's
purpose in this section?
30. What do you gather were the relations between the North
and the South at the tune of this speech? What are those
relations now?
3L Why does Lincoln lay so much emphasis on the opinions
of " the fathers "? Are we guided by them so much in politics
to-day?
32. " Measured by the severest tests of a great speech, by
the use of simple Saxon, by the beauty of its rhetoric, by the
grip of its logic, by the breadth of its historical illustrations,
by the range of its research, by its freedom from scholastic
pretensions, by its brotherly, conciliatory, yet unflinching
treatment of its adversaries, by its wise admonitions to its friends,
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 75
by its manly avowal of the power of the right, by its reverential
acknowledgment of God, by the vast results it achieved — by
all these great elements that make a great speech, it is equal
to any speech recorded in any language." Bishop Fowler.
Can you find all these qualities in the speech?
Brief for the Speech of Senator Stephen A. Douglas
Delivered at Columbus, Ohio, September 7, 1859
Resolved: That you should support the Democratic party.
Introduction
I. Origin and History of the Question.
A. The Democratic party holds to the great principle of the
Nebraska Bill which tells every political community to
regulate its o^\'n affairs.
B. The Republican party holds that there is an irrepressible
conflict between free and slave states which can be
settled only by Congress' making the country all free
or all slave, for
1. Mr. Seward developed the idea of an irrepressible
conflict in a speech at Rochester.
2. Mr. Lincoln at Springfield developed the idea that
the country Vv'ould become all free or all slave.
3. The RepubHcan platform at Philadelphia in 1856 de-
clared that Congress has sovereign power over all
territories.
C. The Democratic party, on the contrary, maintains that the
Federal Government has no right to interfere in the
question in any way.
[The remaining sections usual in a model introduction do not
occur in Douglas's speech.
II. Definitions. The agitation had been going on for some
five years, so that definitions were unnecessary.
III. Admitted, Waived, and Irrelevant Matter. Omitted
for the same reason.
IV. Issues. Not stated, but the speech, though somewhat
rambUng and lacking in precision of statement, is based on the
following:
76 QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY
A. Was the Democratic principle of allowing ever}' political
community to regulate its own affairs operative before
the formation of the Constitution?
B. Is it denied by the Constitution?
C. Will it settle the slavery question more surely than the
Republican principle?] ■
Brief Proper
I. The Democratic principle was operative before the for-
mation of the Constitution, for
A. It actuated the colonies before the Revolution, for
1. Virginia in 1699 passed a law imposing heavy penalties
upon all slaves brought into the colony after that date.
2. This colony passed later thirty-one successive laws
with the same purpose, each annulled by Great
Britain.
3. This colony renewed the agitation in a petition in 1772.
4. Similar legislation was enacted in other colonies.
B. It actuated them in their joint efforts, for
1. The Bill of Rights in 1774 demanded for the colonies
the right to legislate on all internal matters.
2. The Declaration of Independence was a vindication
of this principle.
3. The battles of the Revolution were fought to maintain
this principle.
C. It was maintained after the Revolution, for
1. In 1784 Congress struck out Jefferson's proposal to
prohibit slavery in the Northwest Territory which
had been granted by Virginia.
II. Refutation. The argument of the Republicans' that the
Federal Government has power to control slavery in the terri-
tories is illogical, for
A. The Republicans grant the power of local government in
all matters but the negro.
B. The negro is property as much as an ox or a horse.
C. Each section is best fitted to determine what laws it needs,
for
1. " Our fathers, when they framed this Government under
which we live "... knew that each locaUty required
a different law, for
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 77
a. If they had made the laws uniform, they would
have established slavery, for
1. Twelve of the thirteen colonies then held
slaves.
D. The present free states have become free by the operation
of the principle of local government, for
1. One-half of the original slave-holding states have be-
come free by their own vote.
2. Refutation. The argument that Ohio became free by
the Ordinance of 1787 is untrue, for
a. " Gentlemen of Ohio, you are a free state because
you chose to be free."
E. For the Federal Government to make laws uniform is to
make government tyrannical, for
1. Virginia knows better than Ohio what laws are best
for it.
2. Local government has been fought for by both North
and South.
3. It will allow one section to dominate the other, for
a. The real purpose of the Republicans is to fan
sectional strife.
h. The constant cry of the South is for a national
law to protect slavery in the territories.
F. It is plainly denied by the Constitution, for
1. The fugitive-slave provision speaks of persons " held
to service in labor in one state imder the law thereof."
2. " State " in that clause means territories also.
III. Popular sovereignty is the only sure way of settling the
question of slavery, for
A. In the approaching Congress Republicans will demand that
New Mexico be admitted with a free constitution.
B. The Southerners will make counter demands that Kansas
adopt a slave constitution.
C. Any territory with a sufficient population to organize a
government is capable of self-government, for
1. The argument against " Squatter Sovereignty " is
based on a misunderstanding of Calhoun's posi-
tion.
D. It admits of an indefinite expansion for our country, for
1. Under this rule we have already reached the Pacific.
78 QUESTIOXS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY
2. We are bound to expand and spread until we absorb
the entire continent of America.
E. It serves and preserves liberty.
Conclusion
Since the Democratic principle that every political community'
should regulate its own affairs actuated the Colonies before the
formation of the Constitution, since it is illogical to deny that
this principle is in the Constitution, and since observance of this
principle is the surest means of settling the slavery question,
you should support the Democratic party.
Quotation from Douglas's Speech
The section of the speech in which Douglas made the state-
ment used by Lincoln as his text runs as follows:
I hold that the people of the Territories have the same right
to legislate in regard to slave property that they have in regard
to any and every kind of property [' Right ' and applause].
The Constitution places all kinds of property on an equal foot-
ing. The Northern and the Southern man enter the Territory
on an exact equality, and carry their property with them, and
hold it there subject to local law. If that local law is for them,
then they will be protected; if it is against them, thej^ had better
keep their jiroperty somewhere else. Why, then, should we
prohibit the settlers of the Territory from introducing or exclud-
ing Slavery, either to gratify the Republicans in the North,
or the Southern Oppositionists in the slave States? If we will
only apply the great principle of non-intervention by Congress,
and self-government in the Territories, leaving the people to
do as they please, there will be peace and harmony between
all sections of the Union.
" What interest have you in Ohio in the question of Slavery
in South Carolina? You say that you do not think that Slavery
is necessary or beneficial. That may be true, but your opinion
might be different if your property was all invested in a nice
[rice] plantation in South Carolina, where the white man cannot
live and cultivate the soil. In Ohio it is a question only between
the white man and the negro [Laughter]. But if you go further
South you will find that it is a question between the negro and
I!
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR STUDY 79
the crocodile [Renewed laughter]. The question then may be
a very different one under different climates.
''Our fathers, when they framed this Government under which we
live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than
we do now. They knew when they made this Republic that a
country so broad as ours, with such a variety of climate, soil
and productions, must have a variety of interests, requiring
different laws adapted to each locality. They knew that the
laws which would suit the green fields of New England were
illy [sic] adapted to the rice plantations of South CaroUna;
that the laws and the regulations which would suit the corn
and wheat fields of Ohio might not be well adapted to the
sugar plantations of Louisiana; that the people in different
localities, having a different climate, different interests and
necessities, would want different laws adapted to each locality;
and hence, when the Constitution was made, it was adopted on
the theory that each state should decide the Slavery question
for itself, and also all the local and domestic questions."
NOTES
The First Speech on Copyright
Page 3. line 1. Sirt Macaulay is addressing the speaker of
the House of Commons, Charles Shaw-Lefevre who served as
speaker with distinction from 1839 to 1857.
3. 8. my honorable and learned friend: Thomas Noon
Talfourd (1795-1854), in that day a well-known dramatist,
essayist, and lawyer. He was called Serjeant Talfourd because
in 1833 he became serjeant on the Oxford circuit and rose to be
unquestioned leader of the bar in that district. For his connec-
tion with copyright, see Introduction.
4. 2. indefeasible: Look up the derivation of this word.
4. 5. act of attainder: What, exactly, is an act of attainder?
Do we have such acts in the United States? Would Macaulay's
statement be true in England to-day?
4. 22. Paley, William (1743-1805), was a philosopher and
theologian who rose to high office in the Church of England.
5. 17. primogeniture, or gavelkind, or borough English:
To define these terms you need only to read the passage
above beginning ''modes of succession" (1. 2). For example,
primogeniture is defined in " land generally descends to the
eldest son." In the same way think out the meaning of jure
dii)ino, pars rationabilis, Custom of York, Custom of London.
What principle is Macaulay trying to establish? How does
it apply to copyright after the author's death?
7. 23ff. Maecenas and PoUio : This sentence is an illustration
of Macaulay's power of illustration, for into it he has compressed
the chief points in the history of patronage. McEcenas and
Pollio were Roman statesmen of the first century b.c, who
befriended and helped Vergil and Horace. The Medici, a family
of statesmen in Florence, was most prominent in the fifteenth
century. Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492) was especially
conspicuous in encouragement of letters and art. Louis the
81
82 NOTES
Fourteenth, king of France from 1643 to 1715, saw the most
splendid period in French Hterature, when Racine, Corneille,
Moliere, and Boileaii were writing. Lord Halifax (1661-1715)
and Lord Oxford (1661-1724) were EngUsh statesmen of great
influence, the first under William and Mary, the second under
Queen Anne. Who were the great writers whom they assisted?
8. 32. East India Company, founded by London merchants,
was in 1600 granted by Elizabeth the monopoly of the East
India trade in order to compete with the Dutch in the Indian
Ocean. In the middle of the eighteenth century the company
acquired also political supremacy in India under the leader-
ship of Clive and Hastings. Read the absorbing essays of
Macaulay on these men in Longmans' English Classics. See
Introduction, p. Ill, for Macaulay's connection with the com-
pany. Is it still in existence?
9. 13. Lord Essex: Robert £)evereux, Second Earl of Essex
(1567-1601), received many favors from Elizabeth. English
monarchs had long granted m.onopolies to favorites. Elizabeth
granted them on leather, salt, coal, and a hundred other com-
modities. Sir Walter Raleigh held one on playing cards. Read
a good history of England for the protest against them in 1601.
10. 13. Australasian continent: What parts of Australia
were settled in 1841? Is the heart of the continent valuable
now for grazing?
10. 22. Piince Esterhazy: Prince Paul Anton von Ester-
hdzy von Galantha of Austria was ambassador at London
1815-1818 and 1830-1838. He owned larger estates in land
than any other subject of Austria.
10. 29. Dr. Johnson, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was the
foremost literary man of his time. What books did he write
beside these mentioned in this paragraph? Are they read
to-day? Why?
11. 10. Juvenal was the greatest of the Roman satirists.
Two of his sixteen satirical poems Dr. Johnson imitated in his
poems, " London " and " The Vanity of Human Wishes."
11. 12. our means Parliament's. How did Dr. Johnson
report these debates?
12. 36. Blenheim is an estate near Oxford some twelve niiles
in circumference, with an imposing palace that was eleven years
in building and cost two and a half million dollars. The whole
NOTES 83
property was given to John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough
(1650-1722), for his victory over the French at Blenheim.
13. 1. Strathfieldsaye, about fifty miles southwest of London,
was the seat of Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769-
1852), the victor at Waterloo over Napoleon, 1815.
13. 31. Cowley's Poems w^ere during his lifetime (1618-
1667) far more popular than those of his great contemporary,
John Milton (1608-1674), or of any other poet of his time.
The question, " Who now reads Cowley? " occurs in line 75
of Pope's " The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace
Imitated" (1737). You will find the satire throughout the
poem entertaining. Are the names of authors in this para-
graph arranged chronologically or in anti-climax?
13. 32. Pope, Alexander (1688-1744), was the leading poet
of his generation. You will enjoy his " The Rape of the Lock "
and his translation of Homer.
13. 35. Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke
(1678-1751), was a brilliant but superficial English orator and
politician. David Mallet published his "Works" in five vol-
umes in 1754. They reappeared in eleven volumes in 1786,
and in eight volumes in 1809. His " Letters and Correspond-
ence " appeared in two volumes in 1798. Do these facts sup-
port Macaulay's statement? W^hv does Macaulay select 1814
instead of 1809?
14. 2. Paternoster Row, so called because the prayer-books
of the Church of England were formerly sold there, is a short
street north of St. Paul's Cathedral. It has long been famous
as a centre of Lpndon book publishing.
14. 3. Hayley's (1745-1820) " Triumphs of Temper " was
published in 1781 and ran to twelve or fourteen editions. His
friend Southey wrote of him that everything was good about
him except his poetry. In his " Essay on Byron " Macaulay
declared: " Poetry had sunk into such decay that Mr. Hay ley
was thought a great poet."
14. 16. Milton's granddaughter: The history of the cop}^-
right on " Paradise Lost " is given on p. xiv. Symmons sold
the copyright a few years later for twenty-five pounds. Jacob
Tonson (1656-1736) secured the copyright as early as 1695.
It was his grandnephew and successor, Jacob Tonson the
third, who brought the injunction mentioned by Macaulay.
84 NOTES
Would the present English law (see p. 65 : 29) have helped Mrs.
EHzabeth Foster, Milton's granddaughter? She was the widow
of a weaver and died May 9, 1754, being probably the last of
Milton's descendants.
14. 24. Garrick, David (1716-1779) was a pupil and intimate
friend of Dr. Johnson, and became one of the greatest of English
actors. He gave the benefit on April 5, 1750, which netted one
hundred thirty pounds with other subscriptions.
16. 9. Fielding, Henry (1707-1754), wrote, besides "Tom
Jones " (1749), two other great novels, " Joseph Andrews "
(1742), and " Amelia " (1751), both mentioned on p. 32.
Coleridge was of opinion that the " (Edipus Rex" of Sophocles,
Ben Jonson's " Alchemist " and " Tom Jones " have the best
plots in all hterature.
16. 10. Gibbon's " History " ranks as among the greatest
historical works ever written. Though it was completed in
1788, it is still an authority for the period from a.d. 100 to
A.D. 1453. His treatment of Christianity is by some regarded
as prejudiced.
16. 19. Richardson's novels were the first English novels
of domestic life. " Pamela " (1740) was in two volumes.
" Clarissa Harlowe " (1747-8) extended to eight volumes.
Another of his novels, " Sir Charles Grandison " (pubhshed
in 1753 in six volumes) is referred to on p. 32.
16. 33. Mr. Wilberforce: William AVilberforce (1759-1833)
published in 1797 his " celebrated religious treatise," " A
Practical View of the Prevaihng Religious System of Professed
Christians contrasted with Real Christianity." Before the
end of the year it ran through five editions, and by 1826 had
reached fifteen in England and twenty-five in America. As
a leader in parliament in the fight against slavery, he was an
intimate friend of Macaulay's father in Clapham. As a boy
Macaulay saw him often. Read Trevelyan, " Life of Macaulay,"
chapter I.
17. 3. Mrs. Hannah More (174.5-1833) was another famous
person whom Macaulay knew well as a boy. It was at her house
that his father and mother first met. As a boy he spent many
weeks in her home. She gave him the money to buy his first
books. Read Trevelyan, " Life of Macaulay," chapter I.
She was a firm supporter of Wilberforce, and was well known
NOTES 85
as a religious writer. She never married; the title Mrs. was
formerly applied to both married and unmarried women,
18. 20. Boswell's " Life of Johnson " by universal consent
merits the high praise Macaulay gives it in this paragraph.
James Boswell (1740-1795) spent a great deal of his leisure
from 1763, when he secured an introduction to Dr. Johnson,
down to 1784, when Dr. Johnson died, in taking notes on his
conversation and gathering facts about him. The " Life "
consequently presents a picture unrivalled for the faithfulness
and the vividness with which it reveals an absorbing per-
sonality.
18. 23. a blot in the escutcheon: Macaulay has elsewhere
expressed more directly his feelings that Boswell's constant
following of Dr. Johnson for the purpose of taking notes and
recording his peculiarities was disgraceful. Read his " Essay
on Boswell's Johnson," and also his '' Life of Johnson." Carlyle
took a quite different view. In his " Essay on Boswell's
Johnson," which was a veiled reply to Macaulay, he main-
tained that Boswell's discipleship shows a recognition of great-
ness which is admirable.
18. 36. Camden's " Britannia " was first published in Latin
in 1586 and grew in successive editions. It was translated into
English in 1610. It is a very valuable book because of its full
description of Great Britain at the time and of its rich stores
of antiquarian knowledge. Macaulay as an historian would
especially prize it.
19. 15. John Wesley (1703-1791) was the founder of the So-
ciety of Methodists, which in 1837 numbered 318,716 members
in Great Britain and Ireland. He preached chiefly in the open
air to the lower classes. He traveled five thousand miles a year
and preached fifteen sermons a week. This he kept up for
fifty years. His hymns were first published in 1737. His
journals were published in parts from 1739 to 1791. They
have been called " the most amazing record of human exertion
ever penned by man." His works, when collected in 1771-
1774, filled thirty-two volumes. How would Talfourd's pro-
posed law have applied to these works?
21. 2. piratical booksellers: Why are they called piratical?
22. 1. divide the House: Why is the voting called dividing
the house? See p. xvii.
86 NOTES
22. 6. Be read a second time: See p. xv. The house would
probably not be in session six months later. Was Macaulay's
motion carried? See p. xvii.
The Second Speech on Copyright
23. 5. My noble friend: Philip Henry, Fifth Earl of Stan-
hope (1805-1875) was by courtesy styled Viscount Mahon
or Lord Mahon from 1816 till his succession to the peerage in
1855. Macaulay had reviewed his " History of the War of
the Succession in Spain " in " The Edinburgh Review " for
January, 1833. When Serjeant Talfourd lost his seat in 1841,
he took up with energy the scheme for amending the copyright.
See pp. 66-69 for a brief of the speech to which Macaulay is
replying.
26. 9. Madame D'Arblay (1752-1840) was one of the first
of England's women novelists. Her first novel, " Evelina,"
appeared in 1778, yet she died only two years before Macaulay's
speech. His " Essay on Madame D'Arblay " appeared in
" The Edinburgh Review " for the year after the speech (Jan-
uary, 1843).
26. 9. Miss Austen: Jane Austen (1775-1817) was a greater
novelist than Madame D'Arblay. Macaulay thought her a
" wonderful woman." His nephew tells us that " ' Pride and
Prejudice ' and the five sister novels, remained without a rival
in his affections." What are the five sister novels?
27. 13. Shakespeare: How does Macaulay's use of Shakes-
peare to support his argument in this speech differ from the use
in his first speech? /' Love's Labor 's Lost " was published
in 1598, " Pericles, Prince of Tyre " in 1609, " Othello " in
1622, '' Macbeth " in 1623. When did Shakespeare die?
When would the copyright on each have expired according to
Lord Mahon's and according to Macaulay's law?
27. 17. Milton: How does this paragraph differ from Mac-
aulay's use of Milton in his first speech?
27. 27. Dryden (1632-1700) was for the last twenty-five
years of his Ufe recognized as the leading man of letters in
England. '' Alexander's Feast " was written in 1797. The
four other poems grouped with it appeared in " Fables," 1700.
\ 27. 32. Flecknoe, an Irish writer who died about 1678, was
NOTES 87
a harmless and sometimes agreeable writer of verse whom
Dry den employed in his brilliant satire " MacFlecknoe " for
an attack on his enemy Shad well.
27. 32. Settle (1648-1723), who had some reputation at the
time, aroused the enmity of Dryden and was treated with
haughty satirical contempt as Doeg in the " Second Part of
Absalom and Achitophel," 1682. Macaulay's estimate of
these two obscure writers is partly due to Dryden's satire.
28. 2. "Pastorals": Pope said he composed the poems
when he was sixteen. They gave " manifest proof of his knowl-
edge of books " but almost no evidence of a study of nature
with his own eyes.
28. 14. Fielding: All his novels were published in the last
twelve years of his life.
28. 26. Burke (1729-1797) should be known by every Ameri-
can youth as one of the greatest English orators for his states-
manlike policy for the American colonies. Read Augustine
Birrell's entertaining life in " Obiter Dicta."
29. 8. Sophocles (495-406 b.c.) is considered the greatest
tragic poet. His " Qildipus at Colonos " was not played until
four years after his death.
29. 12. Demosthenes (384-322 b.c.) was the greatest of
Greek orators. His Speech against the Guardians was delivered
at eighteen in a suit to secure the return of more than $15,000
which his guardians had dissipated. His Speech for the Crown,
" the most finished, the most splendid and the most pathetic
work of ancient eloquence," was delivered when he was fifty-
four. Read Plutarch's life of this great statesman.
29. 20. Cicero (106-43 b.c.) was the greatest of Roman
orators and second only to Demosthenes in the ancient world.
His first speech defending Roscius was a bold undertaking.
His philippics against Marc Antony were the direct cause of
his assassination. Read Plutarch's Ufe.
29. 23. Racine (1639-1699) was the greatest of the French
tragic poets. His first play to be produced (" Les Freres
Ennemis ") was presented by Moliere in 1664. His finest
and greatest tragedy, " AthaHe " was first played (1691) at a
girl's school at St. Cyr. ^
29. 24. Moliere was the stage name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin
(1622-1673), the greatest of French writers of comedy.
88 NOTES
" L'Etourdi " (" The Blunderer ") was first played in 1653 at
Lyons. " Tartuffe " was, after a three years' struggle to over-
come hostility, produced in 1667 at Paris.
29. 26. Cervantes, Saavedra Miguel de (1547-1616), is the
greatest of Spanish writers. The two parts of " Don Quixote "
appeared in 1605 and 1615. Of this book Macaulay said,
"It is certainly the best novel in the world beyond all com-
parison."
29. 29. Schiller, JohannChristophFriedrich von'(1759-1805),
is the greatest of German dramatists. He began " The Rob-
bers " when he was only nineteen in a miUtary school. What
are his great plays?
29. 30. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832), is the
greatest name in German literature. He and Schiller were
intimate friends. " The Sorrows of Werther " is a very roman-
tic and indeed sentimental novel published in 1774. What are
his chief works? These later productions are probably the best
proof of Macaulay's contention in this section of the speech.
What is this contention?
29. 31. the Committee: What committee has Macaulay
been addressing?
30. 23. no work of the imagination: Like all sweeping state-
ments, this assertion is subject to exceptions. How old was
Coleridge when he wrote " The Rime of the Ancient Mariner "?
31. 33. Bacon, Francis (1561-1626), one of the most con-
spicuous men of Shakespeare's time, is famous now chiefly as
a writer. Macaulay wrote so long an essay on him that the
editor of " The Edinburgh Review " wanted to cut it down,
but it was so brilliantly written that he was afraid to. It
appeared in July, 1837.
31. 36. Hume, David (1711-1776), wrote a " History of
England" (pubhshed 1754-1761) beginning with the invasion
of Julius Csesar (55 B.C.) and extending to the Revolution of
1688. Up to the appearance of Macaulay's history it was
the most widely read historical work in England. On March
8, 1849, Macaulay wrote to his friend Ellis: " At last I have
attained true glory. As I walked through Fleet Street the
day before yesterday, I saw a copy of Hume at a bookseller's
window with the following label: ' Only 21. 2s. Hume's " His-
tory of England," in eight volumes, highly valuable as an
1
NOTES 89
introduction to Macaulay.' I laughed so convulsively that the
other people who were staring at the books took me for a poor
demented gentleman. Alas for poor David! "
32. 1. Addison, Joseph (1672-1719), wrote most of the Sir
Roger de Coverley Papers that appeared in the " Spectator."
Read Macaulay's " Essay on Addison " and the last half of
Thackeray's lecture on " Congreve and Addison " in " Enghsh
Humorists."
Lincoln's Address at Cooper Union
35. 1. Mr. President: William Cullen Bryant presided at
the meeting.
35. 8. his speech last autumn at Columbus: See p. xxxviii.
36. 5. ''The Constitution of the United States": Does the
Constitution to-day consist of the parts enumerated by Lincoln?
36. 12. the " thirty-nine ": If you are interested in the con-
stitutional convention, read Fiske's " Critical Period of American
History."
36. 26. It is this: For the connection in which Douglas used
the text, study the excerpt from his speech, pp. 78-79, and the
brief, p. 75-78. Does Lincoln state Douglas's position fairly?
A few days after the speech, Lincoln told Rev. A. P. Gulliver
on a train in New England: '' I am never satisfied to leave
a question until I have bounded it north and bounded it south
and bounded it east and bounded it west."
37. 3. In 1784: What use does Douglas make of this action?
See p. 76.
37. 4. the Northwestern Territory: If you do not under-
stand this reference or the term Confederation, read over this
period in your United States history.
37. 33. the Ordinance of '87: Read the history of this '' really
sovereign and greatly important act " to organize a govern-
ment for this region. What reference to this ordinance does
Douglas make? See p. 77.
38. 12. without ayes and nays: That is, there was no roll
call. When the Ordinance of '87 was passed, Judge Yates of
New York required the ayes and nays, when it appeared that
his w^as the only vote in the negative. Lincoln is therefore
quite right in regarding the vote of 1789 as unanimous.
90 'NOTES
40. 26. the Missouri question: There is a reference to this
matter in the Introduction, p. xxxiii, but you should read a full
account m a United States history.
41. 2. by his votes: Pinckney on June 8, 1787, had declared
the necessity of one supreme controlling power, for he con-
sidered this the cornerstone of the government. He was, more-
over, a member of the committee which reported the Ordinance
of '87, and on every occasion when it was under the considera-
tion of Congress voted against all amendments. Lincoln is
scrupulously fair in his description of Pinckney's action.
41. 8. which I have been able to discover: Read p. 73 : 20 for
the opinion of the first editors on the thoroughness of Lincoln's
search.
41. 23. corporal oaths: are oaths confirmed by touching a
sacred object, especially the New Testament, as distinguished
from merely spoken or written oaths.
42. 10. grounds of expediency: Compare with Macaulay,
pp. 3-6.
42. 26. there is much reason to believe : Does Lincoln indi-
cate where you might look for the evidence on this point?
44. 3. the Dred Scott case: See the Introduction for a
reference to this weighty decision, but you should also read
carefully your United States history on this point.
47. 24. "Black Republicans": In the Lincoln-Douglas
debates Douglas used the phrase often to stir up the race pre-
judice of his audience by implying that Lincoln was a radical
abolitionist. In the Ottawa debate he declared that Lincoln
and Trumbull had arranged in 1854 to form " an Abolition
party, under the name and disguise of a Republican party."
48. 11. we shall get votes in your section: The only South-
ern states which cast votes for Lincoln in 1860 were: Delaware,
3815; Maryland, 2294; Virginia, 1929; Missouri, 17,028;
Kentucky, 1364.
49. 3. Farewell Address: You will find this famous message
in Longmans English Classics. A warning against sectional
parties occurs on p. 83. ''In contemplating the causes which
may disturb our union, it occurs as a matter of serious concern
that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing
parties by geographical discriminations — Northern and South-
ern, Atlantic and Western."
NOTES 91
49. 10. he wrote Lafayette: The paragraph runs as follows:
*' I agree with you cordially in your views in regard to negro
slavery. I have long considered it a serious evil, both socially
and politically, and I should rejoice in any feasible scheme to
rid our States of such a burden. The Congress of 1787 adopted
an ordinance which prohibits the existence of involuntary ser-
vitude in our Northwestern Territory forever. I consider it
a wise measure. It meets with the approval and assent of nearly
every member from the States more immediately interested
in slave labor. The prevailing opinion in Virginia is against the
spread of slavery in our new Territories, and I trust we shall
have a confederation of free States."
50. 8. " Popular Sovereignty " was defined in less concrete
terms by Douglas: "My principle is to recognize each State
of the union as independent, sovereign, and equal in its sover-
eignty." See Introduction, p. xxxiv, and Douglas's speech,
pp. 78-79.
50. 32. Harper's Ferry John Brown!! is an allusion to the
famous attempt of John Brown to start an uprising of the
negroes by seizing the United States arsenal at Harper's Ferry,
Virginia, on October 16, 1859. The next day Robert E. Lee
captured him and his army of twenty men.
50. 34. you have failed to implicate a single Republican:
Of the Congressional committee of five, the three Democrats
reported: " It was simply the act of lawless ruffians, under
the sanction of no public or political authority — distinguishable
only from ordinary felonies by the ulterior ends in contem-
plation by them."
51. 3. you are inexcusable to assert it: From his seat in the
Senate on January 16, 1860, Douglas stated his " firm and delib-
erate conviction " that the Harper's Ferry crime was "the natural,
logical, inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings of the
Republican party, as explained and enforced in their platforms,
their partisan presses, their pamphlets and books, and especilaly
in the speeches of their leaders in and out of Congress."
52. 8. the Southampton insurrection in August, 1831, was
organized in Southampton county, Virginia, by a remarkable
slave styling himself General Nat Turner. It resulted in the
death of sixty-four whites, most of them women and children,
and more than a thousand slaves.
92 NOTES
52. 28. the slave revolution in Hayti, extending from 1791
to 1802, was peculiar in that negroes were instigated by the
opjDosing factions of the whites. Toussaint L'Ouverture, a
full-blooded negro, led the half million slaves first against the
English and Spanish and later against the French forces. His
character has been variously estimated; he is eulogized in Words-
worth's sonnet and in one of Wendell Phillips's most eloquent
lectures.
52. 30. The gunpowder plot was a conspiracy among some
Catholics in England to blow up both King James I and Par-
liament, when it assembled on November 5, 1605. A Catholic
peer. Lord Monteagle, who was by his brother-in-law Tresham
warned not to appear, revealed the danger. Guy Fawkes
was found in the cellars beneath Parliament House with thirty-
six barrels of gunpowder, matches, and a dark lantern.
53. 7. In the language of Mr. Jefferson: These words appear
in Jefferson's first draft of the Declaration of Independence,
in protest against the annulment of Virginia's slavery legisla-
tion. See the brief for Douglas's speech, p. 76. Read Fiske's
'' Critical Period."
53. 11. pari passu: Jefferson meant by this Latin phrase
that as fast as negroes should be set free or deported, free
white laborers should take their places.
53. 36. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon was recent
history. On January 14, 1858, he had tried to assassinate
Napoleon III by a bomb. He made London his headquarters.
Because an English jury acquitted him, France was disposed
to condemn Great Britain for negligence.
54. 7. Helper's Book was " The Impending Crisis of the
South," published in 1857. He was a poor white of North
Carolina who sought to show that slavery was ruinous on
economic grounds to the South and to the future of the poor
white and his children. A Southerner declared that any one
who lent his name and influence to the propagation of such
writings was not fit to live. About one hundred and fifty
thousand were in circulation before 1861. The Republicans
spread it broadcast as a campaign document. What other book
had a great influence on the settlement of the slavery question?
54. 12. a million and a half votes: In the election of 1856
the Republicans cast 1,341,264 votes.
NOTES 93
55. 9. the Supreme Court has decided! Observe Lincoln's
analysis of the Dred Scott decision.
56. 17. To show all this: See the "Madison Papers" con-
taining the journal of the constitutional convention. Madison
himself thought it wrong to admit into the Constitution the
idea that there could be property in men.
58. 18. Senator Douglas's new sedition law: a reference to
a resolution introduced into the Senate on January 16, 1860:
" that the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to report
a bill for the protection of each State and Territory of the
Union against invasion by the authorities or inhabitants of any
other State or Territory; and for the suppression and punish-
ment of conspiracies or combinations in any State or Terri-
tory with intent to invade, assail, or molest the government,
inhabitants, property, or institutions of any State or Territory
of the Union."
60. 9. a policy of " don't care " is a reference to a speech by
Douglas in the Senate in 1857 in which he declared that he
did not care whether slavery was voted up or voted down,
60. 13. invocations to Washington: Where in this speech
do we learn what Washington said and what he did?
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Edited by E. L. Millefr,
High School, Detroit, Mich, ^0.30. [For Reading.
Longmans^ English Classics
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lish, Columbia University. $0.25. [For Reading.]
Tennyson's Qareth and Lynette, Launcelot and Elaine, Tha
Passing of Arthur.
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Tennyson's The Coming of Arthur, The Holy Grail and The
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Thoreau's Waldcn.
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Washington's Farewell Address and Webster's First Bunker
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Carlyle's Heroes, Hero=Worship, and the Heroic in History.
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De Quincey's Flight of a Tartar Tribe.
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Dryden's Palamon and Arcite.
Edited by William Tenney Brewster, Professor of English in
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Irving's Tales of a Traveller.
With an Introduction by Brander Matthews and Explanatory
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Milton's Paradise Lost. Books I. and II.
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Language and Literature in Union College. $0.40.
Pope's Homer's Iliad. Books I., VI., XXII. and XXIV.
Edited by William H. Maxwell, Superintendent of New York
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Ethical Culture School, New York. $0.40.
Spenser's The Faerie Queene. (Selections.)
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Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process.
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide
Treatment Date: Feb. 2009
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