Democratick Editorials: Essays in Jacksonian Political Economy
By William Leggett
Ten years after Thomas Jefferson’s death in 1826, an outspoken young editor in New York City was reformulating and extending the Jeffersonian philosophy of equal rights. William Leggett, articulating his views in the columns of the New York
Evening Post,Examiner, and
Plaindealer, gained widespread recognition as the intellectual leader of the
laissez-faire wing of Jacksonian democracy…. [From the Foreword by Lawrence H. White.]
Translator/Editor
Lawrence H. White, ed.
First Pub. Date
1834
Publisher
Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc. Liberty Press
Pub. Date
1984
Comments
Essays first published 1834-1837.
Copyright
Portions of this edited edition are under copyright. Picture of William Leggett courtesy of United States Library of Congress. Original contains the inscription: "Engraved by Sealey, from a Painting by T. S. Cummings, N A." and includes Leggett's signature below.
- Foreword by Lawrence H. White
- Part I, 1. True Functions of Government
- Part I, 2. The Reserved Rights of the People
- Part I, 3. Objects of the Evening Post
- Part I, 4. Reply to the Charge of Lunacy
- Part I, 5. The Legislation of Congress
- Part I, 6. Religious Intolerance
- Part I, 7. Direct Taxation
- Part I, 8. The Course of the Evening Post
- Part I, 9. Chief Justice Marshall
- Part I, 10. Prefatory Remarks
- Part I, 11. The Sister Doctrines
- Part I, 12. The True Theory of Taxation
- Part I, 13. Strict Construction
- Part I, 14. Legislative Indemnity for Losses from Mobs
- Part I, 15. The Despotism of the Majority
- Part I, 16. Morals of Legislation
- Part I, 17. The Morals of Politics
- Part II, 1. Bank of United States
- Part II, 2. Small Note Circulation
- Part II, 3. The Monopoly Banking System
- Part II, 4. Uncurrent Bank Notes
- Part II, 5. Fancy Cities
- Part II, 6. Causes of Financial Distress
- Part II, 7. Why Is Flour So Dear
- Part II, 8. Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents
- Part II, 9. Strictures on the Late Message
- Part II, 10. The Value of Money
- Part II, 11. The Way to Cheapen Flour
- Part II, 12. The Money Market and Nicholas Biddle
- Part II, 13. The Pressure, the Cause of it, and the Remedy
- Part II, 14. Connexion of State with Banking
- Part II, 15. The Crisis
- Part II, 16. The Bankrupt Banks
- Part II, 17. What We Must Do, and What We Must Not
- Part II, 18. The Foresight of Individual Enterprise
- Part II, 19. The Safety Fund Bubble
- Part II, 20. Separation of Bank and State
- Part II, 21. The Remedy for Broken Banks
- Part II, 22. Blest Paper Credit
- Part II, 23. Questions and Answers
- Part II, 24. The True and Natural System
- Part II, 25. The Bugbear of the Bank Democrats
- Part II, 26. Bank and State
- Part II, 27. Theory and Practice
- Part II, 28. Separation of Bank and State
- Part II, 29. Specie Basis
- Part II, 30. The Natural System
- Part II, 31. The Credit System and the Aristocracy
- Part II, 32. The Divorce of Politicks and Banking
- Part III, 1. Riot at the Chatham-Street Chapel
- Part III, 2. Governor McDuffie's Message
- Part III, 3. The Abolitionists
- Part III, 4. Reward for Arthur Tappan
- Part III, 5. The Anti-Slavery Society
- Part III, 6. Abolitionists
- Part III, 7. Slavery No Evil
- Part III, 8. Progress of Fanaticism
- Part III, 9. An Argument Against Abolition Refuted
- Part III, 10. Commencement of the Administration of Martin Van Buren
- Part III, 11. The Question of Slavery Narrowed to a Point
- Part III, 12. Abolition Insolence
- Part IV, 1. Despotism of Andrew Jackson
- Part IV, 2. The Division of Parties
- Part IV, 3. Rich and Poor
- Part IV, 4. The Street of the Palaces
- Part IV, 5. American Nobility
- Part IV, 6. The Inequality of Human Condition
- Part IV, 7. A Bad Beginning
- Part IV, 8. The Whig Embassy to Washington, and Its Result
- Part IV, 9. Right Views Among the Right Sort of People
- Part IV, 10. Newspaper Nominations
- Part IV, 11. Foreign Paupers
- Part V, 1. Monopolies: I
- Part V, 2. A Little Free-Trade Crazy
- Part V, 3. Asylum for Insane Paupers
- Part V, 4. Monopolies: II
- Part V, 5. Revolutionary Pensioners
- Part V, 6. Joint-Stock Partnership Law
- Part V, 7. The Ferry Monopoly
- Part V, 8. Free Trade Post Office
- Part V, 9. Stock Gambling
- Part V, 10. Weighmaster General
- Part V, 11. State Prison Monopoly
- Part V, 12. Corporation Property
- Part V, 13. Regulation of Coal
- Part V, 14. Free Ferries and an Agrarian Law
- Part V, 15. Thanksgiving Day
- Part V, 16. Municipal Docks
- Part V, 17. Associated Effort
- Part V, 18. The Coal Question
- Part V, 19. The Corporation Question
- Part V, 20. Free Trade Weights and Measures
- Part V, 21. Associated Effort
- Part V, 22. Sale of Publick Lands
- Part V, 23. Manacles Instead of Gyves
- Part V, 24. The Meaning of Free Trade
- Part V, 25. Gambling Laws
- Part V, 26. Free Trade Post Office
- Part V, 27. Free Trade, Taxes, and Subsidies
- Part V, 28. Meek and Gentle with These Butchers
- Part V, 29. The Cause of High Prices, and the Rights of Combination
- Part V, 30. Omnipotence of the Legislature
- Part VI, 1. Rights of Authors
- Part VI, 2. The Rights of Authors
- Part VI, 3. Right of Property in the Fruits of Intellectual Labour
THE RIGHTS OF AUTHORS
Plaindealer, February 11, 1837. Text abridged.
Able pens are wielded against us on the subject of literary property. But as we have no end to answer which is not equally that of truth, we insert the arguments of our antagonists with as much readiness as our own, certain that the ultimate result of discussion, in this, as in regard to every topic within the embrace of human reason, must be the establishment of sound principles….
It is true that too many of those whose genius has rendered them immortal, have employed their noblest efforts to embellish the solid structure which tyranny erects on the prostrate liberties of man. The two divinest bards, that ever addressed their strains of undying harmony to the enraptured ears of mortals, were the flatterers and upholders of aristocratic pride, and the scoffers of the rights of the people. Homer and Shakspeare “licked absurd pomp,” and taught men to regard as a superior order of beings those whose only claims to preeminence were founded in rapine and outrage. But when we look back through the bright list of names which English literature presents, we do not find this censure to be of general application. He from whom the remark is derived, as to the potent influence of those who frame a nation’s ballads in forming the national character—sturdy old Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun—did not address himself to a caste; he addressed himself to the people, and stood forward ever the eager and intrepid champion of their rights. Milton did not address himself to a caste, but to mankind; and Marvell and Harrington were animated in their writings by the single and exalted motive of improving the political condition of their race.
But we need not contest the sentiment to which we have offered this brief reply, since it does not touch our argument. It is for the very purpose that “the Republic of Letters” may be upheld by
the people, and that it may be composed
of the people, that we desire to see the principle of literary property abrogated. We do not wish to deny to British authors a right; but we desire that a legal privilege, which we contend has no foundation in natural right, and is prejudicial to “the greatest good of the greatest number,” should be wholly annulled, in relation to all authors, of every name and country. Our position is, that authors have no natural right of property in their published works, and that laws to create and guard such a right are adverse to the true interests of society. We concede at once, and in the fullest manner, that if the propriety of establishing a right of property in literary productions can be shown, the principle ought to be of universal application; that it ought not to be limited to any sect, or creed, or land, but acknowledged, like the plainest rights of property, wherever civilization has extended its influence. An author either has a natural and just right of property in his production, or he has not. If he has, it is one not to be bounded by space, or limited in duration, but, like that of the Indian to the bow and arrow he has shaped from the sapling and reeds of the unappropriated wilderness, his own exclusively and forever.
With regard to the influence which British literature exercises in forming the popular mind and character in this country, we see no cause to fear unfavourable results, if American literature, to which we naturally look to counteract the evil tendencies of the former, is not excluded, by reason of the incumbrance of copyright, from an equally extensive circulation. Leave error free to flow where it listeth, so that truth is not shut out from the same channels. Give both an equal opportunity, and who can doubt to whom will belong the victory? “Who knows not,” says John Milton, “that truth is strong, next to the Almighty? She needs no policies, nor stratagems, nor licensings, to make her victorious. Those are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.” It was under the influence of British literature exclusively, and in many instances of education obtained in British colleges, that our national independence was asserted and achieved; and it would be strange, indeed, if we should be rendered now unmindful of its value, by the tawdry and sickening aristocracy which bedizens the pages of British novels and romances. “The men who write the ballads” are not those whom a copyright stimulates into the exercise of their powers; and if they were, the Americans, thank heaven! are not the people whom ballads move with irresistible influence. We go to our political affairs, as mathematicians go to their abstruse labours; with their intellectual energies screwed to too high a pitch, to be shaken from their purpose by the sounding of brass or the tinkling of cymbals.
We turn now to a consideration of the article of our correspondent, who has ingeniously erected his structure of logical arguments on a foundation furnished by ourselves. Our position that an author has an exclusive natural right of property in his manuscript, was meant to be understood only in the same sense that a mechanic has an exclusive natural right of property in the results of his labour. The mental process by which he contrived those results are not, and cannot properly be rendered, exclusive property; since the right of a free exercise of our thinking faculties is given by nature to all mankind, and the mere fact that a given mode of doing a thing has been thought of by one, does not prevent the same ideas presenting themselves to the mind of another and should not prevent him from a perfect liberty of acting upon them. The right which we concede to the author is the right to the results of his manual labour. The right which is claimed for him is the right to the ideas which enter into his mind, and to which he gives a permanent and communicable form by writing them down upon paper.
But when we pass from corporeal to incorporeal property, we immediately enter into a region beset with innumerable difficulties. The question first naturally arises, where does this exclusive right of property in ideas commence? The limits of corporeal property are exact, definite, and always ascertainable. Those of incorporeal property are vague and indefinite, and subject to continual dispute. The rights of corporeal property may be asserted, without the possibility of infringing any other individual’s rights. Those of incorporeal property may obviously give rise to conflicting claims, all equally well founded. If you catch a fish in the sea, or shoot a bird in the forest, it is yours, the reward of your patience, toil, or skill; and no other human being can set up an adverse claim. But if you assert an exclusive right to a particular idea, you cannot be sure that the very same idea did not at the same moment enter some other mind. This is obviously and frequently true with respect to single thoughts, and it will readily be conceived that it may happen with respect to a series. Language is the common property of all mankind, and the power of thought is their common attribute. Shall you then say to a person who has expressed certain ideas in certain words, you shall have an exclusive right of property in those ideas so expressed, and no other human being shall ever use the same sentiments, without incurring a penalty for his tresspass?
If the author has a natural right of property in the ideas of his mind, once committed to paper, it is a right which ought to be universally acknowledged, and he should be allowed to enjoy exclusively the profit of the use of his property in every civilized nation of the world. But where does this right commence? How many ideas must be joined together before they constitute a property? If a man construct an edifice, every brick or board of the entire fabric is his. He may sell it, or lend it, or convert it to what use he will; but no one can take it against his consent without committing a robbery. Is the author’s edifice of ideas equally his, in its component materials, as well as in their aggregate combination? Every sentence, perhaps, contains an idea, so natural that it is likely to occur to many minds, and expressed in such obvious language, that the same terms substantially would probably suggest themselves to all. His work is made up of such sentences. In what then consists his right of property? Is each particular sentence a property? Or do they not become property until joined together?
But the subjects of books are various. Some are flights of imagination; some are records of facts. In one, history relates her sober details; in another, science demonstrates his abtruse propositions. In all these, intellectual labour is exerted; but is the fruit of that intellectual labour property in all cases alike? Are the meditations of the poet property in the same sense with the calculations of the mathematician; and has each an exclusive right to the results of his labour? Before you answer this in the affirmative, you should reflect that the processes of mathematical calculation are the same throughout the world, and that the end aimed at by them is also identical. A book of mathematics is a book of calculations, conducted according to certain invariable and universally acknowledged principles; and though to compose it requires perhaps intense intellectual exertion, yet it calls for no original ideas or discoveries. Two mathematicians, one in France, for instance, and the other here, may easily be supposed toiling through the same processes at the same moment, and accomplish results exactly the same. Which has the exclusive right of property in his production? Which shall be permitted to publish his book, and proclaim to the other, and to all the world, I alone am invested with the rights of authorship?
Many of the most interesting and valuable works are mere records of discoveries in experimental science. But two philosophers may at the same time be engaged, in different parts of the world, in the same series of experiments, and may both hit on the same result. The discovery, as mere property, is only valuable perhaps through the medium of publication; yet shall the right of publishing be restricted to one, and if the other presume to tell the same philosophical facts, shall he be considered a species of felon? The law of patents rests confessedly on the same principle as the law of copyright. They both pretend to have natural and obvious justice for their foundation. The inventor of a new application of the principles of mechanics claims a right of exclusive property in the fruit of his intellectual labour, not less than the writer of a poem or a play. Yet some of the most valuable inventions which have ever been given to mankind have been produced simultaneously, by different minds, in different parts of the world. It is uncertain to this day to whom men are indebted for the application of the magnetic needle to navigation; and the honour of the discovery of the art of printing is yet a matter of dispute. While Franklin was pursuing his electrical experiments in Philadelphia, the philosophers of Paris were engaged in similar investigations, and with similar success. Rittenhouse, when he planned his complicated and ingenious
Orrery, knew not that such an instrument had already been completed, which was destined to perpetuate the name of its inventor.
*76 Newton and Leibnitz each claimed the exclusive honour of their method of fluxions; and many more instances might be adduced, if we had leisure to pursue the subject, of such jarring and incompatible claims to exclusive property in the fruits of intellectual labour. The cases we have stated will sufficiently show that there cannot be, in the nature of things, a positive and absolute right of exclusive property in processes of thought, which different minds may be engaged in at the same moment of time. Two authors, without concert or intercommunion, may describe the same incidents, in language so nearly identical that the two books, for all purposes of sale, shall be the same. Yet one writer may make a free gift of his production to the public, may throw it open in common; and then what becomes of the other’s right of property?
The remarks which we have thus far offered go merely to assail the position of the natural right of property in ideas, as existing anterior to law, or independent of it. It is essential to the establishment of such a natural right, that it should be shown to be distinct property, which absolutely and wholly belongs to some one individual, and can belong to no other than he. The labour of your hands belongs to you; for no other individual in the world performed that labour, or achieved its particular results. But the labour of your mind can produce only ideas, which may be common to many minds, and which are not susceptible of being distinguished by marks of peculiar property. Another person falling, under similar circumstances, into the same mood of cogitation, may produce ideas—not merely similar—not another set of perfect resemblance to the first—not a copy—but identically the same. There is an inherent difficulty in fixing limits to incorporeality. The regions of thought, like those of the air, are the common property of all earth’s creatures.
We do not offer the crude observations which we have here made as a full answer to our correspondent’s argument; for we mean to reserve the question for a more deliberate and careful discussion in another number. But we merely put them forth as some of the reasons which lead us to deny that the author and inventor have any property in the fruits of their intellectual labour, beyond that degree in which it is incorporated with their physical labour.
Penny Magazine for three cents and carried on the business from 1833 to 1841.—Ed.
THE RIGHTS OF AUTHORS
RIGHT OF PROPERTY IN THE FRUITS OF INTELLECTUAL LABOUR
The Vicar of Wakefield (1776).—Ed.
Bombastes Furioso (1810) the title character is killed in a fight but revives to join in the finale.—Ed.