$125,000

To supply the same number at his price would cost.
  750,000

Difference
  $625,000

Of Mr. Bulwer’s last work, the number that has been supplied to American consumers is probably but about two thirds as great, and the difference might not amount to more than

  $350,000

Mr. Macaulay would not be willing to sell his book more cheaply than that of Mr. Bancroft’s is sold, or $2 per volume, and he might ask $2.50.  Taking it at the former price, the 125,000 copies that have been sold would cost the consumer
  $500,000

They have been supplied for
  100,000

The difference would be
  $400,000

Mr. Alison’s work would make twelve such volumes as those of Mr. Bancroft, and his price would not be less than $25.  The sale has amounted, as I understand, to 25,000 copies, which would give as the cost of the whole

  $625,000

The price at which they have been sold is $5, giving
  125,000

Difference
  $500,000

Of “Jane Eyre” there have been sold 80,000, and if the price had been similar to that of “Fanny Fern,” they would have cost the consumers.

  $100,000

They have cost about
  25,000

Difference
  $75,000

Total result of a “few cents” on five books, $1,950,000

Under the system of international copyright, one of two things must be done—­either the people must be taxed in the whole of this amount for the benefit of the various persons, abroad and at home, who are now to be invested with the monopoly power, or they must largely diminish their purchases of literary food.

The quantity of books above given cannot be regarded as more than one twentieth of the total quantity of new ones annually printed.  Admit, however, that the total were but ten times greater, and that the differences were but one fourth as great, it would be required that this sum of $1,950,000 should be multiplied two and a half times, and that would give about five millions of dollars; which, added to the sum already obtained, would make seven millions per annum; and yet we have arrived only at the commencement of the operation.  All these books would require to be reprinted in the next year, and the next, and so on, and for the long period of forty-two years the payment on old books would require to be added to those on new ones, until the sum would become a very startling one.  To enable us to ascertain what it must become, let us see what it would now be had this system existed in the past.  Every one of Scott’s novels would still be copyright, and such would be the case with Byron’s poems, and with all other books that have been printed in the last forty-two years, of which the annual sale now amounts to many millions of volumes.  To the present price of these let us add the charge of the