simple is really a perpetual lease; and the taxes and other services due to the State are the rents paid. In America, this would be called very conservative doctrine; for it gives society or government that complete and absolute power which, in America, we know that divine institution demands, commands, and should exact for its own preservation, to the last penny of accumulation, and the last drop of blood. Mr. Spencer seems to shrink a little from the consequences. And he encourages his English readers by telling them, that, as a matter of expediency, it may be well to recognize old titles; and that "men having got themselves into the dilemma by disobedience to law, must get out of it as well as they can;" that abstract morality has no concern with our extricating ourselves from the perplexities accompanying the present tenure of property. This encouragement savors a little of the consolation which the preacher administered to a hearer who had been overwhelmed with anguish by his description of Calvary and its sufferings. Finding it difficult to soothe her, the frightened pastor said, that, after all, it was a great while ago; and that the place was far off where it happened. Abstract morality, as Mr. Spencer admirably shows in other places, has a great deal to do with the extrication of mankind from their present perplexities. It is a pity to surrender the elixir, at the moment we have discovered the poison. The answer that the Duke of Leeds or the Duke of Sutherland, whom he invokes, would make to his appeal should be this, and, as we suppose, it would be: "We are tenants of society. We pay enormous rents to society. Whatever society demands, when it chooses to enlarge these rents, we pay. We hold on precisely your tenure." If Mr. Spencer says, in reply, that society is very inadequately represented by queen, lords, and commons, the dukes would answer, that that was not their fault, but "society's." If society in England chooses to be so represented, and certainly it does, so far as the world can see, they do all that can be demanded of them, in paying to its bailiff all the rents that he demands.

Having thus stated the origin of what we call property in

land, Mr. Spencer proceeds to state that property in the products of a man's labor springs from it. It is, in a certain sense, more absolutely a man's own than is the earth on which he labors. Society's contract with the workman has been this: "Provided you deliver to us a stated share of the produce which, by cultivation, you can obtain from this piece of land, we give you the exclusive use of the remainder of that produce." We consider this view of personal property completely sound. It recognizes the essential fact, that property is the creature of civil order or of society; that it cannot exist, in any sense, without, some mutual agreement. There is no original or divine right of property: it is an institution resulting from the organization of society.

Proceeding safely and surely thus far, Mr. Spencer plunges into the consideration of property in ideas. Partly, perhaps, because an author's experience is more like to make him conversant with such property than with property in stocks or in land, he enters on this discussion with an intensity which we hardly observe in other chapters. He is bitterly severe on legislators and on courts, because they do not recognize, he says, property in ideas as a right, and because they say that a patent is only a stimulus to industry and talent.

But all the invective in this chapter seems to us undeserved. Has not Mr. Spencer just been showing that property in things is not in itself an original right? that it has been earned only by the supposed rent which a man has paid to society for the earth out of which these things are created? Why should the property in an invention be any more sacred than the property in a bushel of corn? It is because speculators like Mr. Spencer claim too much for the right of property in ideas, that legislators and courts, pushing their claims to the reduction to absurdity, are so apt to speak carelessly, as if they had no claims at all.

Mr. Spencer's doctrine about visible property, which we conceive to be true, is this, that society is the owner of the whole earth: then, for purposes of convenience, the earth is assigned into different sections, of a size fit for use, and the use of them is given to tenants, who are called

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owners, on condition that they pay to society such rents or taxes as are demanded. If they pay these rents, any corn, trees, houses, metals, wares, pictures, or statues, which their industry, mediately or immediately, produces from the land, is their property. No man may take it away.

Let us now apply the same principle to what is thought the analogous case of property in ideas. The domain of Truth is the common freehold of all society. Let a man pay his rents, and he may enter where he will, and develop it as he will. In that event, a specific invention which he makes is his own. But it is only his own, on condition that he pays society some rent or tax to compensate it for the undivided use of his invention. For this payment, Mr. Spencer, so far as this chapter shows, makes no provision.

Farther yet: the analogy between the bushel of corn, and the invention of a machine, wholly fails, if the inventor try to push his right so far as to claim the right in all similar machines. If we adopted Mr. Spencer's favorite reduction to the absurd, we should say, that in the invention of a new machine lies the germ of all the machines which shall ever use its principle. Because it contains this germ, the inventor should be paid at the outset for its value in all time to come; or whenever, in after time, the machine is made, he shall be paid a royalty by the maker for the value of the germ. If we tried this alternative in the case of the corn, the farmer would be paid in advance for the contribution he makes to all the bushels of corn of which he sells the germs; or, through all time, he would have a claim to a royalty on all the corn which grew from his bushel. In this alternative, Mr. Spencer would accept the first half. He would say, pay in advance the inventor, for the worth that his idea is going to be in all possible future industry. But this is, clearly, to claim an impossibility. Who shall determine this value?

The truth is, that, granting the inventor has a right to his idea or invention, society has at least an equal right to compel him to make the invention. God gave him the power of invention, for the common good, not for his own. Woe to him, if he do not use it! It is the omission to observe this

right of society to the service of all its members, which complicates so much the consideration of the so-called rights of inventors and authors. Mr. Spencer, as usual, looking with contempt on society, and sympathizing with individuals, ignores the right of society altogether.

But how, if, on a disabled steamer, which had lost a rudder, an engineer on board should say, "I know how to construct a steering apparatus, which will bring us all to port; but I will not teach the rest of you how to make it, unless you unite in giving me all your property, and binding yourselves to me as my servants till you die"? We should say he had no right to make this sale of his invention. Yet his claim would be very small compared with Mr. Spencer's. How, if, at the outset of the rebellion, a statesman had said, that he had invented a system of conciliation, which would emancipate all the slaves in the land, and restore the Union, and satisfy all parties; but he would not announce that system until we had settled on him and his heirs the whole national domain? Clearly, he has no right to drive any such a bargain. As little have the heirs of Archimedes the right which Mr. Spencer claims for them to a royalty, every time any man calculates the weight of water by Archimedes's invention; or the heirs of Shakespeare a right to a royalty from every man who says,

"A rose

By any other name would smell as sweet."

In point of fact, the share of society in the joint right by which property in ideas is held is so large, that the property is worthless unless society have fulfilled, painfully and well, its share in the invention. Why is the copyright of Mr. Dickens's book or Mr. Spencer's worth five times as much in America as in England? Because in America the government has chosen to spend millions on millions in teaching everybody to read these books, while in England the system of government makes it desirable that very few people shall be able to read them with interest or pleasure. Grant that the right to the idea is Mr. Spencer's or Mr. Dickens's, the right to the enjoyment of it seems to spring, in a proportion vastly

larger, from the work of those who have prepared the readers to use the idea. The value of the idea, without such preparation, may be precisely estimated by those who will carry the books to Madagascar, and essay the sale of them there.

Mr. Spencer himself, as usual at the end of one of his chapters, acknowledges that he does not know what to do about it. He confesses that several people may make an invention at the same time, without knowing of each other. In that case, he is at a loss how to decide. But, as usual, he says it is none of his business. The decision does not seem to us so difficult. Its principles, as we believe, are these.

Society has a right to the utmost efforts of all its members. Just as it may make every man fight for it, it may claim that such thinker or officer shall think his best for it. This is universally acknowledged regarding moral truths. No man has a right, we say, to hold back his moral convictions. It is equally true regarding all truth, invention, or discovery.

Let society, then, after inventions have been made and tested, after books have been written and circulated, decide by its most solemn and careful tribunals what are the fit rewards to be paid from the common treasury to the inventor or the author. No system of award could be so false and inconsistent as the present. Our system of copyright pays to the author of a novel worse than worthless, if it is only highly enough spiced with licentiousness, higher rewards than it pays to the author of the "Mécanique Céleste." The inventor of a machine so simple that every one can make it after it is invented, obtains nothing for his patent because it cannot be protected; while the inventor of some large-scale improvement, which must be used under the eyes of the world, watches his "rights," and obtains his princely income. No system but that here suggested, will, as we believe, ever rescue copyright and patent-right from the absurdities which surround them when we attempt the futile task of classifying them with other forms of property.

Applying in detail the "first principle" of the book to the things the State has been accustomed to do, Mr. Spencer