sand books out of a million-authors consulting their convenience, or their wants, in the sale of their copyrights, and copyrights constantly passing out of the hands of their creators into the hands of the publishers? The great bulk of the literary copyrights belong to the "trade." Who ever hears of copyrights passing down, like family pictures, to the descendants of authors, and bringing them profits? There are, no doubt, examples; but legislation is not to be put in motion for very rare exceptional cases.

The final decisions of the Congress not only affirm a limited right of property in literary and artistical works, but embrace every detail necessary to its establishment. The resolutions are minute and comprehensive, and may be said to lay down the whole machinery for carrying the plan into operation. These resolutions have been so imperfectly, and indeed so blunderingly, slurred over and epitomised in the English newspapers, that I will give you a summary of them, upon the accuracy of which you may rely. As a mere historical record, the recapitulation is interesting:

I. The Congress is of opinion that the international recognition of property in literary and artistic works, ought to be adopted in the legislature of every civilised people; that it ought to be extended from country to country, even in the absence of reciprocity; and that legislation in all countries where the principle is adopted, should be founded on an uniform basis. The rights of foreign and native authors to be assimilated, and no further formalities to be required of an author in the prosecution of his rights in a foreign country, than were required to establish them in his own.

II. Authors to possess exclusive right over their works during their lives, the same right to descend to the conjoint survivor during his or her life; and the heirs or grantees of the author to enjoy the right for fifty years, to date either from the decease of the author, or from the extinction of the right in the late husband or wife. Posthumous works published before the rights of the conjoint survivor, or of the heirs or

grantees, shall have expired, to enjoy the same duration of time originally granted by law; if published after those rights are extinguished, the duration to be limited to thirty years. Anonymous works to have a copyright of thirty years, dating from the year of publication; but the author may enter upon his full legal rights by making himself known at any time within that term. The exclusive right of publication is guaranteed to the authors of lectures, sermons, and other discourses publicly delivered; but the speeches of pleaders, and discourses delivered in political assemblies, may be published without the consent of the authors. The exclusive right of translation to be guaranteed to the author for ten years, on condition that he exercises his right before the expiration of the third year, in failure of which any person may exercise it anywhere except in the country where the work was originally published.

III. Under this head are the resolutions which relate to Dramatic and Musical works. They declare the right of representation to be independent of the right of reproduction, and that there should be no distinction as to the enjoyment of those rights. Musical works to be protected against being executed in public without the consent of the author. It is a strange omission in this department of the labours of the Congress, that no provision is suggested for the protection of dramatic productions against transplantation and adaptation. It may be difficult to identify a child stolen and smeared and stained by the gypsies; but that is no reason why some wholesome police regulation should not be devised with that end in view.

IV. There are sundry resolutions in this division relating to works of art, conformable in their general principles to those which apply to literature, and presenting no special feature except a recommendation that penal legislation be adopted against counterfeits and forgeries.

V. The proposed fiscal regulations are simple and sweeping. The Congress demands the abolition, or modification, of customs' duties on books and works of art, the simplification

of tariffs, so as to facilitate the interchange of such works, and the reduction of postal duties.

Here is a complete code of suggestions for the institution of a system of international copyright; nor can it be regarded as the mere speculation of an assembly of men of letters and artists, since it has already received the sanction of at least one of the governments for whose consideration it was compiled. The Belgian minister has declared his intention of supporting in the legislature a law in which these resolutions shall be practically embodied. Nor is it less significant of the sincerity with which the subject has been taken up by those who have the power to influence still more extended results by their example, that the King, accompanied by the Duke of Brabant, attended one of the meetings of the Congress, and that at the close of its sittings he received at dinner some of the principal members of the bureau. It is not unusual for the sovereigns of free countries to be seen in public assemblies, and even to invite special guests to their palaces; but a sovereign who appears in the midst of an assembly convened for a particular purpose, identifies himself with that purpose; and in conferring so marked a distinction upon its promoters as to give them an express reception in private, he places beyond doubt the interest he takes in its success. His Majesty has since given the most practical proof of his intentions on the subject, by announcing in his recent speech on the opening of the Chambers a project of law for embodying the recommendations of the Congress.

The entertainment given at the palace of Brussels on this occasion was an exception to the usual routine of royal banquets. It was not a mere ceremonial. It was intended as a testimony of the King's desire to confer upon the Congress the weight of his personal sanction; and the sagacity his Majesty has displayed throughout his long reign in the government of the kingdom, in the cultivation of its industrial resources, and in the promotion of practical measures of improvement, has not often been more VOL. LXXXIV.—NO. DXVIII,

happily or more usefully exercised. To have originated this movement is an auspicious incident in the history of free Belgium, and it affords a striking contrast to the actions of which the country was the theatre in former times. The change was well expressed by M. Rogier, in his address to the assembly upon his election as honorary president: "By its topographical and neutral situation, as well as by the nature of its institutions," said the Minister, "Belgium has acquired for many years the privilege of offering an appropriate arena for pacific and fruitful contests, after having been so often the field of bloody and sterile combats. Upon her soil cannon no longer resounds, swords are no longer crossed, lances no longer broken. Ideas, more powerful than all these, are now the combatants. Many fall and disappear in the conflict; but what does it signify, if the strongest and the most generous survive? This is the end of war, and the reward of victory. Ideas come triumphant out of the fight; are elevated to principles; pass into the domain of a new diplomacy: reforming and provident governments seize them; they become the law of a country; and finally spread into other countries, when experience has verified their value."

I will reserve till I see you, my dear E., my recollections of an evening which has left upon the memory of every person who was present the most agreeable impressions. The cordiality with which his Majesty received his guests, and the intimate knowledge he displayed of their individual specialities, furnish a very intelligible key to the popularity and influence he enjoys. But I must not omit to say that the dinner was graced by the presence of the charming Duchess of Brabant, who possesses, in a pre-eminent degree, all the qualities calculated to dignify and adorn the high station to which she is destined.

I have not touched upon the hospitality that was extended to the foreign members of the Congress during their brief sojourn in Brussels. It is so difficult to conceive the possibility of a soirée being given at the

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house of the Prime Minister of England, to three or four hundred literary men and artists, in recognition of their efforts to obtain an alteration in the laws affecting their order, that we can scarcely regard with gravity the occurrence of such a circumstance in Brussels. Yet when M. Rogier received the members of the Congress at the Ministry of the Interior, every gentleman who was present felt that the soirée was not a barren compliment to art and letters, and that the interest which that distinguished statesman took in the subject which brought so remarkable an assembly together, would in time bear valuable fruit. I confess, too, that there was to me a significance in the scene which presented itself on the square of the Grande Place on the night when the Cercle Artistique et Littéraire, or, more properly, the authorities of the city of Brussels, received the Members of the Congress, which was quite as impressive as the scene itself was novel and picturesque. The artistic and literary club is held in the grand old Gothic house, known as the Maison du Roi, which directly faces the Hôtel de Ville; and the large room in which we assembled was that from the windows of which the infamous Alva witnessed the execution of Counts Egmont and Horn. What a different scene was now disclosed, as we gazed down from these very windows upon the Grande Place! The whole of that square, except the distant corners, from whence the people pressed onward towards the Maison du Roi, was filled by a dense multitude, whose upturned faces were lighted by numerous flambeaus held aloft by boys. Immediately below us was a band, relieved at intervals by a

choral society, who executed in turn select pieces of music. The most admirable order and decorum prevailed throughout that vast crowd; open lanes were kept for the passage of guests and members of the club, at the voluntary instance of the people themselves; and every demonstration of enthusiasm that took place within was responded to with a corresponding movement without. The tall old houses on all sides of the square were lighted up to the base of their quaint roofs; every window was filled with eager spectators, and in front of us rose up the white tower of the ancient Hôtel de Ville, ascending like a mist of silver, and vanishing into the clouds at a height which the eye vainly attempted to follow. The spectacle was in itself extremely striking, and, associated with the objects to which it was addressed, it possessed, for me, a strong interest. It enabled me afterwards thoroughly to appreciate the justice of the terms in which M. Scribe, at our dinner (for we had a grand dinner of our own, at the celebrated restaurant which enjoys its European reputation under the name of its former proprietor, Dubos), proposed a toast to the health of the City of Brussels: I will give you his words-"Gentlemen, I have the honour to propose a toast to the City of Brussels, the free and hospitable city! She had already rivalled the first cities of Europe by her splendour and her elegance; and in collecting within her walls, not a Congress of Kings, but the delegates of all the royalties of intelligence, she has become to-day the capital of progress and civilisation!" This is very French; but it is also very characteristic, and worth preserving as a bit of Scribe.-Adieu!

WE Couple these works* together, less on account of the similarity of the subject matter, than for the sake of the contrast observable in the views entertained by their authors, of the origin and probable issue of the convulsion under which our Eastern empire is still heaving.

In an article on the provinces of Gangetic India, published in the August Number of this Magazine, in the year 1854, we pointed out as a source of future danger to our Indian possessions the propensity of many among the ruling section of our countrymen on the banks of the Ganges to adopt doctrines that obtain temporary currency though only as theories in Europe, and to apply these with all the force of official influence to the patient population subject to their rule. We instanced the objections to large hereditary landed estates, to endowments, to special exemptions from common burthens, as opinions sometimes advanced, but never as yet acted on, in the mother country, which in India have met with a practical application to the business of civil administration. To the above list we might almost have added the wild theory of the French economists of the last century, that at a certain stage in its progress it is for the good of a nation for the government to be the sole proprietor within its limits, since we rather think that this doctrine, never acted on, we believe, except by the late Pasha of Egypt, was at one time not with out its advocates in Calcutta.

We also endeavoured to show how the most humane men, hardened by theory, had, in their zeal for what they deemed to be good for the public, trifled with individual rights, until some among them almost came up to the mark of that distinguished

worthy, lately deceased, of whom it is recorded in the Times of the 21st September, "that he would have risked a revolt of human nature rather than deal with man as he is." We next tried to trace the progress of this spirit, showing how it led first to an arbitrary and anti-judicial mode of dealing with every right or privilege which stood in the way of any favourite scheme of internal change or reform, and then, by a natural sequence, to a disregard of all the restraints imposed by our previous professions of moderation in our dealings with remote as well as conterminous foreign states. We concluded by dwelling upon our unprovoked invasion of Affghanistan as the great external development of the spirit that during the preceding decade had been leavening our internal administration. Though we do not profess to have attained to a prophetic strain in our article of 1854, yet we may say for it that it must be seen to have been written under a presentiment of evil such as subsequent events have proved far from visionary. It is true that the disturbance so recently raging along the banks of the Ganges was mainly, at least in its origin, of a military character; but we have only to open Mr Edwards's narrative to see how the flame was fed and fanned by discontents having their source in measures of civil government. But before citing from his pages, or from those of Mr Gubbins, we wish to lay before our readers what we trust will be found to be a fair and honest sketch of that revolution in the minds of our own countrymen which, as we think, has been one of the most potential causes at work to produce the fearful explosion of the year that has just gone by. To the

few unconnected with India who have paid any attention to what passes there, it must be known that from the days of Lord Cornwallis, or the year 1793, to those of Lord William Bentinck, or the year 1830, the most striking characteristic of our Government, especially in its Gangetic provinces, was a great, perhaps an excessive desire, to extend the protection of law and of a fair administration of justice over every class of our subjects.

With this noble end in view, and influenced by an almost pedantic devotion to the forms and fashions of the judicial institutions of England, our Government submitted itself to the jurisdiction of its courts, and in its desire to merit the title of "the Just," committed itself to pledges which had better have been reserved until more was known of the country and its resources. Of these pledges the most serious was that by which Lord Cornwallis bound himself and his successors to recognise as landlords those whom he found in the apparently analogous position of Zumeendars, and never to demand of them more than was assessed upon their lands at the settlement of 1793. This measure, if judged of by the results, does not merit all the reproaches bestowed upon it by the deeper thinkers of a later age. Under its influence jungles have disappeared and population increased, and we may presume that content has been diffused, from the fact that, excepting in the districts bordering upon those of Upper India, and at the few spots where up-country Sepoys were cantoned, not a movement has been heard of among the forty millions of the inhabitants of the Lower Provinces since first the late mutiny broke out.

The territory known as the Upper Provinces became ours mainly by cession from the then reigning Nawab of Oude during the first three years of the present century. At the outset of our rule, crafty men from the Lower Provinces, taking advantage of the little that the English rulers and their new native subjects know of each other, contrived, under the forms of law, to get nearly half of the states in the districts of Allahabad and Cawnpore into their

hands. The evil had grown to such a height that the Government, finding the ordinary courts unequal to grappling with it, appointed, in the year 1821, a special commission to inquire into and redress the wrongs of the ancient landholders. This worked admirably, and would have been productive of nothing but good had it not been for that change which soon after came over the spirit of our rulers. The powers vested in the special commission were such as could only be with safety confided to select and chosen hands. This, however, was a distinction that did not enter into Lord William Bentinck's estimate of his fellowcreatures, and he, holding that all men in the enjoyment of equal remuneration were to be accounted as equally wise and trustworthy, at once extended to all officers of a certain grade the extraordinary jurisdiction conferred by his predecessors on two gentlemen of special fitness for the particular duty. The result was such as would probably ensue in Ireland if the powers of the Encumbered Estates Commission were to be imparted to every judge of a county court. A great disturbance of parties in possession, even in districts to which the particular abuse prevailing in Cawnpore and Allahabad had never reached, was the immediate consequence of this unwise extension given to a purely exceptional measure. This gave the first, though a comparatively slight shock, to that confidence in the security of their tenures which it was for our interest the proprietary body in Upper India should entertain. A new settlement or readjustment_of the land revenue soon followed. Infinite labour and vast ability were brought to bear upon this great work, but the good resulting from it, though doubtless considerable, fell short of what it might have been if the guiding spirit of those by whom it was conducted had not been one of positive aversion, if not of hostility, to the whole class of the landed aristocracy of the country. They indeed hardly concealed their belief that the old aristocracy, being necessarily unfriendly, our wisest policy was to depress it, and raise up another more dependent on ourselves in its place.