And first, is it just that MM.

Cousin, Guizot, Villemain, Damiron, and company, paid by the State for delivering lectures, should be paid a second time through the booksellers ?--that I, who have the right to report their lectures, should not have the right to print them?
Is it just that MM.

Noel and Chapsal, overseers of the University, should use their influence in selling their selections from literature to the youth whose studies they are instructed to superintend in consideration of a salary?
And, if that is not just, is it not proper to refuse literary property to every author holding public offices, and receiving pensions or sinecures?
Again, shall the privilege of the author extend to irreligious and immoral works, calculated only to corrupt the heart, and obscure the understanding?
To grant this privilege is to sanction immorality by law; to refuse it is to censure the author.

And since it is impossible, in the present imperfect state of society, to prevent all violations of the moral law, it will be necessary to open a license-office for books as well as morals.

But, then, three-fourths of our literary people will be obliged to register; and, recognized thenceforth on their own declaration as PROSTITUTES, they will necessarily belong to the public.
We pay toll to the prostitute; we do not endow her.
Finally, shall plagiarism be classed with forgery?
If you reply "Yes," you appropriate in advance all the subjects of which books treat; if you say "No," you leave the whole matter to the decision of the judge.
Except in the case of a clandestine reprint, how will he distinguish forgery from quotation, imitation, plagiarism, or even coincidence?
A savant spends two years in calculating a table of logarithms to nine or ten decimals.