public good, or are we not? Is 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, 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, 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 murder, so would an act invading the
right of an author to his copy be, according to these gentlemen,
legal robbery.

Now, Sir, if this be so, let justice be done, cost what it may.
I am not prepared, like my honourable and learned friend, to
agree to a compromise between right and expediency, and to commit
an injustice for 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 strongest necessity would lead me to discuss a
subject 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 which creates property can be defended only
on this ground, that it 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 apprehend, even of those who
have studied in the most mystical and sentimental schools of