propose to add fourteen years to the twenty-eight years which the
law now allows to an author. His copyright will, in this way,
last till his death, or till the expiration of forty-two years,
whichever shall first happen. And I think that I shall be able
to prove to the satisfaction of the Committee that my plan will
be more beneficial to literature and to literary men than the
plan of my noble friend.

It must surely, Sir, be admitted that the protection which we
give to books ought to be distributed as evenly as possible, that
every book should have a fair share of that protection, and no
book more than a fair share. It would evidently be absurd to put
tickets into a wheel, with different numbers marked upon them,
and to make writers draw, one a term of twenty-eight years,
another a term of fifty, another a term of ninety. And yet this
sort of lottery is what my noble friend proposes to establish. I
know that we cannot altogether exclude chance. You have two
terms of copyright; one certain, the other uncertain; and we
cannot, I admit, get rid of the uncertain term. It is proper, no
doubt, that an author's copyright should last during his life.
But, Sir, though we cannot altogether exclude chance, we can very
much diminish the share which chance must have in distributing
the recompense which we wish to give to genius and learning. By
every addition which we make to the certain term we diminish the
influence of chance; by every addition which we make to the
uncertain term we increase the influence of chance. I shall make
myself best understood by putting cases. Take two eminent female
writers, who died within our own memory, Madame D'Arblay and Miss
Austen. As the law now stands, Miss Austen's charming novels
would have only from twenty-eight to thirty-three years of