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
severely that, maddened by intolerable wrong, they opposed to
their sovereign a resistance before which 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 indignation of the English people? I believe, Sir,
that I may with safety take it for granted that the effect of
monopoly generally is to make articles scarce, to make them dear,
and to make them bad. And I may with equal safety challenge my
honourable friend to find out any distinction between copyright
and other privileges of the same kind; any reason why a monopoly
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 remunerated; and the
least exceptionable way of remunerating 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 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 than the law proposed by my honourable and learned
friend. For consider this; the evil effects of the monopoly are
proportioned to the length of its duration. But the good effects
for the sake of which we bear with the evil effects are by no
means proportioned to the length of its duration. A monopoly of