Browse Documents By...
Original Language...
Documents For...
Browse Commentaries By...
Browse Referred Persons By...
Gaultier's memorandum for the provincial booksellers, Lyon (1776)
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France : Mss. Fr. 22073 n°144
Citation:
Gaultier's memorandum for the provincial booksellers, Lyon (1776), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org
Back | Record | Images | Commentaries: [1]
Translation only | Transcription only | Show all | Bundled images as pdf
19 translated pages
Chapter 1 Page 2
The protests that some Booksellers of Paris are constantly pouring out at the feet
of the Courts and in the vicinity of the Administration, the unfavourable
prejudices that they endeavour to infiltrate among the Magistrates, have finally
caused alarm in the Book Trade of the Provinces. Had the plan perhaps been made to
annihilate it? The trade by which we have served our Fellow Citizens, following the
example of our Predecessors, and under the protection of the Minister and the Laws,
is it not but a reckless brigandage to which we are all equally complicit? In this
odious assumption, the sacrifice of our fortunes, and the removal of our shops,
would not be able to assuage the avid pretensions of our adversaries.
When private interest, always prone to exclusive enjoyments, imagined the art
of the Privilege, this new kind of servitude imposed upon the whole Society, which
has no existence at all in Natural Right, it was very necessary to establish a
positive Jurisprudence to reconcile them, as much as it would be possible, with this
Right. What was this Jurisprudence? Wisdom and equity were the basis of it and
directed the Rules of it; their aim was, not only to secure the enjoyment of these
ideas for those who would have had them, but far much more to limit the term of one
and to restrict the effects of it. The Sovereign, persuaded that similar favours
would be an attack on general abilities, on rights and on communal benefits, limited
his prerogative himself, and did not want Privileges to be indeterminate, nor granted
arbitrarily and without motive.
The Privileges of the Book Trade, which appear to have been the origin of these
acts of Sovereignty, at least in the form in common use nowadays, were first of all
subjected to these wise rules. It was forbidden, under penalty of nullity, to obtain
one for ancient Works, and to have continuations granted beyond the term fixed in the
Privilege, once it had been obtained; because, the Privilege can only be granted
equitably by way of real merit and, as a result, it should carry with it the complete
reward.
In those happy times for our Book Trade, when these good laws were in force, a vast
domain was opening up in France to activity and industry. All the works of the Ancients,
without exception, and all the writings of the Moderns, which were not under the
guarantee and in the term of a Privilege, once it had been obtained, used to be part of
the communal enjoyment, to the great benefit of the Book Trade and public Instruction.
For, until the grievous epoch of the surprise Patent Letters in 1701, made by the
Booksellers of Paris, it was sufficient for the Booksellers of the Provinces to certify
the expiry of a Privilege before the Local Judges, in order to obtain from them the legal
Permission to print the Books which were the subject of it, and it can be seen from the
considerable number of Printing Houses which used to exist at that time, whether in the
Provinces, or in Paris, how much the Book Trade of the Kingdom used to flourish in those
days.
In the Patent Letters of 1701, nothing was changed in the beneficiary Laws which
limited exclusive cupidity; but, through the devices of our enemies, it was forbidden in
them for the Royal Judges to grant permissions, from then on, to print any work exceeding
two pages; so that Permissions du Sceau* had to be substituted for Permissions from these
Judges.
From then on the Booksellers of Paris, who had become masters of the territory, no
longer exercised any restraint towards the provinces; they inducted the Magistrates into
the Book Trade and their
________________________________
*) Permissions awarded by the keeper of the seals.
Chapter 1 Page 3
ij
Offices: in defiance of the Rules, they had themselves granted Privileges
and continuations with profusion, for all the ancient or modern Books. At
the same time they had Permissions du Sceau refused to the Booksellers of
the Provinces, which in respect of the Books whose unique legal Privilege
had expired, were to replace the Permissions of the Judges; there therefore
no longer remained any sustenance for the Book Trade of Province; deprived
of all the means of speculation and of trade, it rapidly fell into ruin,
and would have been altogether annihilated, if an enlightened Administration
had not come to its rescue.
The Wise Laws which had restrained exclusive claims, were, so to speak,
annihilated by the multitude and the audacity of the infractions; illegal
titles increased excessively, were brazenly portrayed as real and Sacred
properties; these injustices were great, protected by private interest,
very difficult to destroy; the Minister did not attempt to eradicate them;
he believed it would suffice to return, in some way, to the Book Trade of
the Provinces, by way of tolerance, a freedom and an activity that it could
only find in good Laws put into force. Privileges, therefore, continued to
be granted to all applicants, without examination, without motives and
without foundation; but in reality, these vain Privileges were regarded as
simple non-exclusive Permissions, and these editions from the Provinces
were tolerated, because there could not be contraventions of titles without
value and contrary to the Law.
So that the tolerance, of which we speak, did not undermine real and
justly acquired rights; a similar condescension is not presupposed in any
Administration. This tolerance consisted solely in suffering that the Trade
of the Provinces conserved the activity which it had enjoyed under the Law,
without forcing itself to abide by the formalities prescribed by this Law.
This remedy was necessary, as, on the one hand, through the Patent Letters
of 1701, the Book Trade of Province had been deprived of the specific
Permissions of its Judges, and on the other hand, it was not possible for
those involved to obtain them from the Chancellery without tearing down the
Obstacles put up by the Booksellers of Paris, and without causing the
annihilation, at the same time, of the innumerable Privileges which they
had illegally obtained over all the Books.
It was therefore necessary, for the sake of printing in the Provinces,
that eyes were closed to the lack of form and title, as they had been closed
for the Capital regarding abusive Privileges; and in order to conserve the sad
remains of our Book Trade, the decision was taken to allow it to practise as
before, but without specific authorisation, on all Books which had once been
approved, which were not guaranteed by a legitimate Privilege and conforming
with the Laws.
Such has been, in France, the Administration of the Book Trade in its
second epoch, that is to say, since the Patent Letters of 1701, until the
present day. Under the protection of this tolerance, the Trade of the Provinces
recovered some activity; but it never rose up to the point from which it had
been made to fall. What use is an uncertain and variable tolerance, which
sometimes closes its eyes, and sometimes opens them to throw out prohibitions;
which silently encourages and threatens aloud; which necessarily changes the
rules in the hands of each Administrator: under which the daring and
enterprising man overruns everything, whilst the industrious Merchant,
enlightened and honest, fears compromising himself, stifles his activity and
groans under the oppression; where the uneducated Citizen does not know if he
is innocent or guilty, and remains undecided on the justice or injustice of
everything that he may undertake? It is therefore very true that tolerance,
of whatever scope that it may be, never provides the Citizen with the security,
the freedom and the advantages that he enjoys under the protection of just
and precise laws; Oh! It would have been a lot to be desired for the national
Book Trade, that those imposed by justice and long experience had been allowed
to act.
Chapter 1 Page 4
iij
Despite the favourable intentions of the enlightened Magistrates, who have
been successively charged with the administration of the Book Trade, these ways
of tolerance that they have granted to the Provinces to replace just rights,
could only imperfectly re-establish this Trade there, above all in its
relationship with Foreign Countries; meanwhile, the growth in Education, the
increase in the number of Scholars and Men of Letters, have, in recent times,
brought some success to the Booksellers of the provinces: but the jealous
desire of the principal Booksellers of the Capital was immediately reawakened.
Not content with having annihilated our Trade and our Industry in the past,
by making the Laws useless through the infractions themselves, they wish once
again, today, to rob us of the fruits, as it were, aborted, of a vague and
faltering tolerance; a thousand interested or charmed voices make themselves
heard on their behalf around the Magistrate, and are appealing against us:
the past is veiled from him with care, our former successes, which have
glorified the French Book Trade in all Europe, are hidden from him; no-one
speaks of our decline, of our ruin, in short of the cunningly combined causes
which imposed them.
A trade authorised by the Law, and which is only condemned by the Offenders
against this Law, is portrayed to him as new, criminal and unjust endeavours;
a Trade which has never ceased to exist in France, insofar as the Administrators
of the Book Trade have more or less known, or followed, the true principles.
If unjust prejudices, born out of slander, are spread in the Capital and
amongst the Men of Letters; if our adversaries do not stop applying to us and to
our trade the most indecent and the most offensive epithets; so jealous of our
smallest successes, they endeavour to inspire the Officers in Power with their
animosity, the Magistrate who enters into the profession of the Book Trade,
completely surrounded by our natural enemies, will he be able to refrain from a
few critical remarks against some active and industrious Citizens, who are wanted,
absolutely, stifled.
At the distance we are from the Minister who must decide our fate, how will
we manage to overturn the obstinate efforts of our adversaries? Nevertheless our
civil status, the fortune and the honour of our Families depend on his decision;
these interests are pressing, it is important to us to shed light on it: but,
to do this with the decency that is appropriate to his eminent qualities, we have
had to assure ourselves beforehand of the justice of our cause: this is why we
have drawn up a Chart on this matter, faithful to the facts and principles avowed
by the Laws and by sane Policy: we have submitted it to the enlightened gaze of
the most Learned Jurisconsults; only one has signed, but all have commended our
methods, all have encouraged us to send our reclamations to the feet of the
illustrious Head of the Magistracy, whose knowledge and equity attract the
confidence and love of all good Citizens.
In this Memoir, written with a haste necessitated by the danger which
threatens us, we have demonstrated that the exclusive Right to manufacture and
sell any Work, is contrary to Common Right; which is not on any account based
on Natural Right, and which depends uniquely on the will of the Sovereign.
We have proved that through the Laws made in France on this subject, all
Privileges obtained without legitimate cause, are declared null and void, as they
exploited the authorities, that a Privilege, once it has expired, cannot be
extended, continued or renewed, unless the number of augmentations prescribed by
these Laws have been made to the Work that is the subject of it, and that in the
case where similar continuations may have been obtained, they are declared null
and void: that in such a way all the Works which are not under the guarantee of
a Privilege conforming to these rules, are free and belong in fact to
Chapter 1 Page 5
iv
the industry in general, on the condition that the man who wants to take pleasure
in it, takes a non-exclusive Permission from the Government, which also leaves to
all others the power to obtain similar for it in competition for the same Works.
We have now put forward the true principles on Literary Property, and we have
proved that it cannot be attacked by these wise and beneficial Laws; we have shown
through consistent facts and through the History of the National Book Trade, that
in the times when these Laws were in force, the Trade of our Books in Foreign
Countries was raised to such a high point that it far surpassed the real and
relative merit of these Books and of our French Literature at that time.
We have demonstrated that just at the moment when the Booksellers of Paris
succeeded in creating an illusion to such an extent that Infractions of the Laws
were protected from these very Laws, this Trade suffered a destruction so rapid
that in spite of the progress of Education and of the Sciences, it was necessary,
by means of increased Judgements, to successively abolish half the Printing Houses
of the Kingdom, whilst, by a singular and striking contrast, there rose up
everywhere, in Foreign Countries and on our borders, Typographical establishments
uniquely intended for the printing and trade of our French Books.
We have finally proved that there is only one way of returning its natural
superiority to the National Book Trade, that is to put back into force just Laws,
to annihilate and prohibit exclusive titles obtained against the will of these Laws,
to return to the industry in general and to the freedom of speculations, the
Bibliography and the entirety of Literature. In that case the educated Bookseller
will choose at a glance from this immense number of volumes, those which he must
multiply and spread: then Privileges will be respected; the stimulus of industry
and even indigence will no longer serve as pretexts for counterfeits: and those,
who, through an unjust usurpation, would attempt to render favours legitimately
obtained from the Prince null and void, can be handed over to the severity of the
Rules.
If, on the contrary, the Administration adopted for a moment the narrow and
destructive principles of the Booksellers of the Capital; if the power to print
ancient Works was taken away from the Booksellers of the Provinces, and the Books
which have enjoyed the term of a legitimate Privilege, what would be left of their
industry? All Authors, as it is known, give themselves over to the Booksellers of
Paris and only have this path by which to make their Works known. It would
therefore, in that case, be necessary to eliminate the Printing Houses of the
Provinces, to sacrifice the National Book Trade to a few individuals in the
Capital, to give up trade with Foreign Countries, to see the French Printing
Houses swarming at our Neighbours and furnishing all of Europe with the very
Works written in our Language; it would be necessary to renounce the progress of
public Instruction within the Kingdom, and to upset all the Citizens of the
Provinces with the high price of Books and the difficulty of procuring them. Such
are the irreparable ills which are evidently born from the system which the
Booksellers of Paris endeavour to have adopted under the pretext of the false
rights they have extorted: the History of the Book Trade of late has only too
greatly demonstrated these disastrous effects.
WE IMPLORE the illustrious Head of the Magistracy, at whose feet we have just
placed our reflections, to return the vigour to the true Laws of the Book Trade,
and to consider that a wise Policy always increases the points of distribution
of commodities of primary necessity, very far away from making the circulation of
them stem from a single centre and a small number of Officers; soon they will be
congratulating themselves for having returned life to the Trade of the Bookseller,
a Trade so important to the Nation and so deserving of its care and attention.
Chapter 1 Page 35
30
II. PROPOSAL.
On Ownership in the Book Trade. It is conferred by
Privilege and cannot be separated from it. It conforms
entirely to that of other Trade Privileges.
This is the subject about which the Booksellers of Paris have
cried out with the greatest vehemence. By disguising it in a
thousand clouds, the Author of their Memoir makes the greatest
efforts of genius to present it in a favourable light.
The composition of a Book, whatever it may be, he says, is a
genuine creation. That is not always true; but we will not contradict
him. He adds: to challenge the Author about his right to dispose of
it, would be to attack his existence. We do not believe that such an
unjust idea would occur to anyone. It was thus totally useless to
use two whole pages to prove a right that no-one contests. But it was
with a view to concluding that the Bookseller, who has bought the
manuscript from an Author, would be substituted in his right and
represents, in this respect, the Author himself. Which is again quite
obvious and has no need of further proof.
The difficulty is not, therefore, in knowing if a Manuscript work
belongs to its Author, but in deciding if this Author, (or the
Bookseller representing him), once he has given his Work to the Public,
and that, to say as much, he has made it a necessity for them, has the
right to prevent this same Public from multiplying copies of it. In
order to resolve this difficulty, we propose the following two
questions to the Booksellers of Paris.
1º. The Author of a Work, or the Bookseller, legitimate purchaser
of his Manuscript, having only obtained a simple Permission, and not
an exclusive Privilege; can they be opposed when other Booksellers
reprint this same Book? Can they seize their editions and pursue them
like counterfeiters?
2º Is it legitimately permitted to reprint, in the Kingdom, Books
published Abroad?
But we must save our adversaries from the embarrassment of the reply.
Chapter 1 Page 36
31
When the inventor or the possessor of whichever object it may
be, decides to display it to the Public, he conveys to them, at the
same time, the right, not to take possession of the original, but
most certainly to imitate or copy it, if the object is useful or
enjoyable for them.
It is therefore obvious that the proprietor of a Manuscript,
who has sold and distributed copies of it to the Public, without
having obtained an exclusive Privilege from the Government, has no
reason to complain, if those who have bought these copies have
reproductions made of them at will; for he has transferred, through
this sale, a property equal to the only kind of property he could
have had.
It is, therefore, only through the one exclusive Privilege
granted by the Government that the exclusive right to multiply and
sell the copies of a Work exists, in such a way that the property of
a Manuscript is spread by the sale or the transfer of copies, whilst
the property of the Privilege is retained in spite of this sale. It
is very necessary to distinguish these two sorts of property, if one
wants to be heard.
For in the case where the Author has obtained no Privilege at
all, the Bookseller, purchaser of his Manuscript, can only have bought
the first type of property from him, and when he sells and distributes
the copies of his edition, it must be considered as conveying both in
multiplicity and detail, the property which he alone had bought, and,
as it were, in bulk. By giving up his property to him, the Author has
transferred to him the right to obtain from it, through his industry
and his trade, a more or less large profit, following the merit or
the success of the Work; but he could not give to him the exclusive
right to copy or print his Work and to sell copies of it, as he did not
have it himself.
These proposals are likely not to be able to be contested and
it should be noted that of all the inventions, recipes and discoveries
that could be imagined in the Arts, literary compositions are the only
ones for which these controversies have been stirred up and no-one up
until now has thought that this was a theft from the inventor of some
object, to imitate or copy it, as without having supplied himself with
an exclusive Privilege,
Chapter 1 Page 37
32
he has rendered his invention public through its sale or
otherwise.
Have the famous Academicians of the Academy of Sciences in
Paris ever been accused of injustice, when being admitted into
the ateliers of the Arts, they go to spy on the progress and
methods of the most able Masters; to steal away, as it were,
their secrets from them, to then divulge them and expose these
inventions to the Public, so that each person, by imitating them,
may work with success for the general benefit of society. Would
anyone dare to accuse them of having been, through their
behaviour, the instigators of that which the Booksellers call,
in their field, a heinous robbery?
The Art of the Men of Letters, Art par excellence, this Art
so necessary for the public education and for the progress of all
the other Arts, would it be, therefore, the only one that we would
want to burden with the fetters of an imaginary property? And the
invention of Printing, instead of favouring the progress of their
works, has it not only brought further obstacles? For before this
period, this supposed right, which granted Authors the unlimited
right to make and to distribute copies of their Works, had not yet
been imagined. One sees, on the contrary, that each person was
able, at his own will, to transcribe and sell the copies of the
Works of the Scholars which he had bought.
[...]
The same principles, which guide the trade of printed Books,
existed before the advent of Printing, in the
Chapter 1 Page 38
33
trade of Manuscripts, because the method of multiplying
copies could not increase, or decrease the rights of real
property.
For, if in these early times a man of letters, having bought
a Manuscript for 50 livres, had the right to multiply copies of
it at will and sell them, he could therefore make in the sale of
a single one of these copies this high price that he had paid for
the original and he had, furthermore, as at present, a profit
proportional to the number of copies that he had had made.
If the man who, today, buys a copy of a printed Book wants
to make multiple copies of it to sell them on, he can only do this
by printing; and if he has bought at a low price the copy which
served as a copy for him, it is clear that he will also only be
able to sell each of the copies that he will have had printed at
a low price and that the reimbursement of his advances, as well as
the profit of his speculation, will only be able to occur, as in
the first case, on the sale of a greater or smaller number of
copies; the costs of his whole edition make up, therefore, the
equivalent of the outlay that the Manuscript Merchants used to
make in the past, both for the first copy and for the transcriptions
that they used to have made of it.
It should be concluded from all this, Iº. That since the discovery
of the art of Printing, as previously, there has never existed any
natural exclusive right under whichever pretext that it may be, of
invention, creation or other, by which an individual may assume the
prerogative to alone provide for the whole of society a useful or
enjoyable object. 2º. That it could not be permitted for anyone to
make efforts of genius to create, through his industry, new wants for
men, if the result of this industry was an exclusive right to fulfil it.
3º. That the sale or publication of a work or some invention or other,
is a transfer, full and entire, of the enjoyment, for the benefit of
the Public, which carries with it, by necessity, the right to imitate or
copy at will. 4º. That if the property of the Inventors or Authors
brought with it the exclusive right to sell to the Public the enjoyment
of their discoveries, this property would be of the sort that, while not
ceasing to dispose of it, the Author would always conserve it,
Chapter 1 Page 39
34
whole and intact; in such a way that every Inventor, and his family,
would be born for ever privileged proprietors, and at the same time
perpetual owners and sellers of things that they would have been
pleased to give birth to. In this strange supposition, there would
be nothing, neither in the Arts, nor in the Sciences, for which the
exclusive property of manufacture and sale could not be claimed.
It is therefore consistent that the Sovereign alone can, to
reward industry, grant to Inventors the exclusive ability to sell
to his Subjects, during a limited period, the contribution and the
enjoyment of their inventions; and that the title given by the
Prince is the unique foundation of this exclusive right, which
naturally does not form any kind of property.
After having settled, on solid principles, the true nature of
Literary Property, we must come to the second of the questions that
we put to our adversaries, relating to new Works that belong to
foreign Countries. If they reject the principles that we have just
laid out, they would not be able to resolve this question in one
way or another, without falling into a manifest contradiction, either
with the system that they wish to establish, or with their own
behaviour.
If they say that one can legitimately reprint foreign books in
France, this maxim will be diametrically opposed to their system of
property; because foreign Booksellers have also acquired their Works
from Authors, with the same rights and in the same way that it is
done in Paris, and it is no more permitted to steal (to make use of
their expressions) from one's neighbours than from one's fellow citizens.
If, on the contrary, they support the negative, one can rightly
throw back against them all the odious epithets that they have used;
because it is a fact that half the Books that they appropriate are Works
taken away from foreign Booksellers, or from those of the Provinces,
and over which they have no kind of right at all.
Chapter 1 Page 40
35
The comparisons used by the Author of their Memoir
to compare property in the Book Trade to that of a possession,
of a house, are just as false and illusory as his other
arguments. The Bookseller who has acquired a Manuscript and
who has made a print of it, certainly has a well-founded and
fully legal property over this Manuscript and over the edition
that is in his Shops. This property can in all respects be
compared to that of a house, of a piece of land and any other
possession acquired legitimately. But as soon as he has sold,
in all, or in part, his copies to the Public and he has gained
payment from them, they no longer belong to him, but to those
who bought them; and if they are not founded on a title granted
by the Government, he certainly does not conserve any kind of
right over the copies which were sold, through which he may
limit the uses and employment that the buyers would like to put
them to.
___________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 41
36
That which we have just developed is more than sufficient
to demonstrate that the right to print and to sell, exclusively,
a Book which has been made public, is born from a Privilege alone
and not from the acquisition and the possession of the Manuscript,
seeing as the Author himself does not have this right on any
account, if he does not obtain it from the Government. To dare
to support the contrary would be to accuse wise and enlightened
Governments of the most absurd and most revolting injustice.
__________________________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 42
37
For it is clear that in this false hypothesis Letters of
Privilege should in no way grant this right, but only
confirm it; that they should recognise it in perpetuity
and that it would be an attack on natural property to limit
and restrain it. It would be an even greater advantage,
according to this erroneous principle, not to adorn all new
Books with an exclusive Privilege and only to grant them
simple Permissions to print as usually happens.
Let the Booksellers of Paris forget, for a moment, the
idea of monopolisation that suggests to them an ambition too
vast and too little enlightened; let them remember these
happy times when the Bookseller was especially brought before
the respectable Magistrate who had just taken up a place in
the Council of our Monarch. Under his administration, the
Privileges were made
___________________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 43
38
rare; they were only granted for Books when the undertaking
deserved encouragement, or which, having cost the author
__________________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 44
39
long and difficult labours, had earned him this reward:
continuations were constantly refused and works
_______________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 45
40
of an inferior class were normally only endowed with
simple Permissions. This enlightened Magistrate, who
was the Protector of the Book Trade and of the Men of
Letters, whose beloved name is only pronounced with
reverence and emotion by all the Booksellers of the Kingdom,
would he have been ignorant of the principles of common
right and of public interest?
If the Man of Letters, not content with the real and
legitimate property that he has over his works, wants to
leave the common and general class of ordinary properties,
to give, to his own, an indefinite and limitless extension
and that he intends to subject the whole of society and
even future generations to appealing to him and to his
family, under the pretext that he has created, invented,
given being, existence, life to his Works, from this it will
necessarily follow that all imitation will be forbidden for
ever and that on penalty of committing a manifest theft, it
will not be permitted for anyone to take advantage of the
industry of others, neither for his need, nor for his
pleasure, without addressing himself to the inventor and
having paid him the tax that he would like to impose on him.
It will result from this that every inventor, without
exception, will be able to make the same claim; that the
most mediocre invention and the most sublime effort of
genius will have an equal right to this strange prerogative
because they are equally the product of the imagination
which gave birth to them.
If such an absurd system were able to gain ground, we
would see reclamations of ownership rise up on all sides.
There are no arts, no professions, where one does not see a
multitude of individuals wanting to assume an exclusive right
over some object of which they or their ancestors claim to
have been the inventors. Not a new fashion, not a jewel would
appear, for which those
__________________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 46
41
who had conceived them would not want to forbid their imitation and
sale to other men. And, certainly, this claim would be less dangerous
than that of the Booksellers of Paris. One can, with no inconvenience,
go without frivolous things; if they are too expensive and too few in
number, but most Books are of absolute necessity and it is interesting
that they are spread everywhere and at reasonable prices.
Would it be the sum of the troubles and the labour that would
have been able to establish this singular kind of property? But there
are Authors who only produce a few slim Works over a long period of
time and by dint of solicitudes, whilst others produce rapidly and
with ease numerous volumes. Would this be the merit of the products?
But why wouldn't the mediocre Writer have just as much right as the
most enlightened Author?
Every man owes to society the tribute of his physical and
intellectual abilities in exchange for that which he receives from
the other individuals who comprise it. The man of genius, who
communicates his ideas to society, is only returning, in exchange,
the product of those ideas that he has received from society. And
the man who, by publishing the fruit of his research, would claim
that his discoveries could never be enjoyed without taking recourse
to him, and who would form, in this way, the plan of making use of
his contemporaries and posterity, would be an unjust man to whom
society should refuse everything.
We do not claim here to go against the just property which
belongs to genius. Nothing belongs to us more than that which our
labours, our devices, our observations and our calculations have
allowed us to discover or imagine. But once we have received
payment for them, be it in money, or in glory, all our fellow
citizens, all men, have the right to freely enjoy the gift that
we have given them.
_____________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 47
42
By accepting the system of property of the Booksellers of Paris,
the Letters from the Chancellery would be useless.
_________________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 48
43
For, if the Authors' prerogative was able to confer the exclusive
right to multiply and sell for ever the copies of their Works,
censorship and approbation (so necessary to prevent the publication
of bad Books) would alone suffice to leave to the Proprietors of
the Manuscripts the power to exercise their supposed right to print
them perpetually and exclusively.
Very far from a similar claim would be favourable for Literature,
it would bring with it, inevitably, failure. The circulation of ideas
and of discoveries would be annihilated, Books printed would be left
ignored in their own cradle; the difficulty of getting hold of them
would slow down the advancement and progress of the Sciences, the
honourable Profession of the Men of Letters would no longer exist
except through shameful misappropriations. The greed of a thousand
mercenary Writers would denude the true merit and would suffocate
genius. If one substitutes money and cupidity for honour, for
distinctions and for commendations, Literature will be degraded and
will no longer produce anything great. The man who devotes himself
to his country, as well as he who dedicates himself to defend it,
must live from his trade; but they will serve it badly, if, driven
by avarice, they lose sight of glory, the most flattering of rewards.
Since the exclusive right of manufacture and sale can only be
imparted in accordance with the Privileges granted by the Sovereign,
it is clear that those of the Book Trade fall into the class of
other Trade privileges. Nothing distinguishes them from the other;
they come from the same principle and have the same aim. The Government,
by granting the one and the other has equally in mind to grant a
reward to talents and to give some encouragement to useful enterprises.
The Author of the "Memoir of the Booksellers of Paris" makes efforts
to find an imaginary difference between these Privileges. He puts forward,
first of all, the pre-eminence of literary products over
_______________________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 49
44
those of the Arts. But this pre-eminence has no bearing on the
matter. It does not prevent a printed Book, however sublime it
may be, from becoming an object of trade and from having to
follow the rules.
The inventor of a machine, of a new material, or of such
other thing that it may be, is no less the master, possessor of
his invention, than the Author is of the Book that he has created,
whatever difference there may be between the worth of one and of
the other. There are even cases where the first would better
deserve to be privileged, because often, to succeed, he has been
obliged to make numerous expensive attempts.
The same Author proposes that it is easier to counterfeit
Books than a mechanical invention and that for this reason the
Privileges of the first should be more strictly protected by the
Government. Although this assertion may be without foundation,
one will not argue over it with him. One has never claimed to
fight against legally obtained Privileges.
He adds again that it is useful to counterfeit a mechanical
invention because it is the way to perfect it. But as a Book can
only be made so by the Author, it is to remove his means of doing
this, by multiplying editions without his consent. It seemed,
first of all, that this Writer, who has written so much, declaimed
so much, poured out so much abuse to stand up for, to extend the
literary properties, makes very little of the case of those of the
other classes. Let us allow him this discrepancy, but not the
absurdity of the consequence; for the more a Book will be multiplied
and spread, the more the Author will find strength in the welcome of
the Public and in the judgement that the large numbers of Readers
will have made of it, to rework and improve his Work.
The "Memoir of the Booksellers of Paris" contains, on this
subject, a throng of other arguments just as unwise and as
inconsequent; it would be to descend into puerility to pick out all
of them; let us abandoned them to their own futility.
Translation by: Laura Hough (pp. 2-5, 35-49)
Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France : Mss. Fr. 22073 n°144
Citation:
Gaultier's memorandum for the provincial booksellers, Lyon (1776), Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org
Back | Record | Images | Commentaries: [1]
Translation only | Transcription only | Show all | Bundled images as pdf
19 translated pages
Chapter 1 Page 2
The protests that some Booksellers of Paris are constantly pouring out at the feet
of the Courts and in the vicinity of the Administration, the unfavourable
prejudices that they endeavour to infiltrate among the Magistrates, have finally
caused alarm in the Book Trade of the Provinces. Had the plan perhaps been made to
annihilate it? The trade by which we have served our Fellow Citizens, following the
example of our Predecessors, and under the protection of the Minister and the Laws,
is it not but a reckless brigandage to which we are all equally complicit? In this
odious assumption, the sacrifice of our fortunes, and the removal of our shops,
would not be able to assuage the avid pretensions of our adversaries.
When private interest, always prone to exclusive enjoyments, imagined the art
of the Privilege, this new kind of servitude imposed upon the whole Society, which
has no existence at all in Natural Right, it was very necessary to establish a
positive Jurisprudence to reconcile them, as much as it would be possible, with this
Right. What was this Jurisprudence? Wisdom and equity were the basis of it and
directed the Rules of it; their aim was, not only to secure the enjoyment of these
ideas for those who would have had them, but far much more to limit the term of one
and to restrict the effects of it. The Sovereign, persuaded that similar favours
would be an attack on general abilities, on rights and on communal benefits, limited
his prerogative himself, and did not want Privileges to be indeterminate, nor granted
arbitrarily and without motive.
The Privileges of the Book Trade, which appear to have been the origin of these
acts of Sovereignty, at least in the form in common use nowadays, were first of all
subjected to these wise rules. It was forbidden, under penalty of nullity, to obtain
one for ancient Works, and to have continuations granted beyond the term fixed in the
Privilege, once it had been obtained; because, the Privilege can only be granted
equitably by way of real merit and, as a result, it should carry with it the complete
reward.
In those happy times for our Book Trade, when these good laws were in force, a vast
domain was opening up in France to activity and industry. All the works of the Ancients,
without exception, and all the writings of the Moderns, which were not under the
guarantee and in the term of a Privilege, once it had been obtained, used to be part of
the communal enjoyment, to the great benefit of the Book Trade and public Instruction.
For, until the grievous epoch of the surprise Patent Letters in 1701, made by the
Booksellers of Paris, it was sufficient for the Booksellers of the Provinces to certify
the expiry of a Privilege before the Local Judges, in order to obtain from them the legal
Permission to print the Books which were the subject of it, and it can be seen from the
considerable number of Printing Houses which used to exist at that time, whether in the
Provinces, or in Paris, how much the Book Trade of the Kingdom used to flourish in those
days.
In the Patent Letters of 1701, nothing was changed in the beneficiary Laws which
limited exclusive cupidity; but, through the devices of our enemies, it was forbidden in
them for the Royal Judges to grant permissions, from then on, to print any work exceeding
two pages; so that Permissions du Sceau* had to be substituted for Permissions from these
Judges.
From then on the Booksellers of Paris, who had become masters of the territory, no
longer exercised any restraint towards the provinces; they inducted the Magistrates into
the Book Trade and their
________________________________
*) Permissions awarded by the keeper of the seals.
Chapter 1 Page 3
Offices: in defiance of the Rules, they had themselves granted Privileges
and continuations with profusion, for all the ancient or modern Books. At
the same time they had Permissions du Sceau refused to the Booksellers of
the Provinces, which in respect of the Books whose unique legal Privilege
had expired, were to replace the Permissions of the Judges; there therefore
no longer remained any sustenance for the Book Trade of Province; deprived
of all the means of speculation and of trade, it rapidly fell into ruin,
and would have been altogether annihilated, if an enlightened Administration
had not come to its rescue.
The Wise Laws which had restrained exclusive claims, were, so to speak,
annihilated by the multitude and the audacity of the infractions; illegal
titles increased excessively, were brazenly portrayed as real and Sacred
properties; these injustices were great, protected by private interest,
very difficult to destroy; the Minister did not attempt to eradicate them;
he believed it would suffice to return, in some way, to the Book Trade of
the Provinces, by way of tolerance, a freedom and an activity that it could
only find in good Laws put into force. Privileges, therefore, continued to
be granted to all applicants, without examination, without motives and
without foundation; but in reality, these vain Privileges were regarded as
simple non-exclusive Permissions, and these editions from the Provinces
were tolerated, because there could not be contraventions of titles without
value and contrary to the Law.
So that the tolerance, of which we speak, did not undermine real and
justly acquired rights; a similar condescension is not presupposed in any
Administration. This tolerance consisted solely in suffering that the Trade
of the Provinces conserved the activity which it had enjoyed under the Law,
without forcing itself to abide by the formalities prescribed by this Law.
This remedy was necessary, as, on the one hand, through the Patent Letters
of 1701, the Book Trade of Province had been deprived of the specific
Permissions of its Judges, and on the other hand, it was not possible for
those involved to obtain them from the Chancellery without tearing down the
Obstacles put up by the Booksellers of Paris, and without causing the
annihilation, at the same time, of the innumerable Privileges which they
had illegally obtained over all the Books.
It was therefore necessary, for the sake of printing in the Provinces,
that eyes were closed to the lack of form and title, as they had been closed
for the Capital regarding abusive Privileges; and in order to conserve the sad
remains of our Book Trade, the decision was taken to allow it to practise as
before, but without specific authorisation, on all Books which had once been
approved, which were not guaranteed by a legitimate Privilege and conforming
with the Laws.
Such has been, in France, the Administration of the Book Trade in its
second epoch, that is to say, since the Patent Letters of 1701, until the
present day. Under the protection of this tolerance, the Trade of the Provinces
recovered some activity; but it never rose up to the point from which it had
been made to fall. What use is an uncertain and variable tolerance, which
sometimes closes its eyes, and sometimes opens them to throw out prohibitions;
which silently encourages and threatens aloud; which necessarily changes the
rules in the hands of each Administrator: under which the daring and
enterprising man overruns everything, whilst the industrious Merchant,
enlightened and honest, fears compromising himself, stifles his activity and
groans under the oppression; where the uneducated Citizen does not know if he
is innocent or guilty, and remains undecided on the justice or injustice of
everything that he may undertake? It is therefore very true that tolerance,
of whatever scope that it may be, never provides the Citizen with the security,
the freedom and the advantages that he enjoys under the protection of just
and precise laws; Oh! It would have been a lot to be desired for the national
Book Trade, that those imposed by justice and long experience had been allowed
to act.
Chapter 1 Page 4
Despite the favourable intentions of the enlightened Magistrates, who have
been successively charged with the administration of the Book Trade, these ways
of tolerance that they have granted to the Provinces to replace just rights,
could only imperfectly re-establish this Trade there, above all in its
relationship with Foreign Countries; meanwhile, the growth in Education, the
increase in the number of Scholars and Men of Letters, have, in recent times,
brought some success to the Booksellers of the provinces: but the jealous
desire of the principal Booksellers of the Capital was immediately reawakened.
Not content with having annihilated our Trade and our Industry in the past,
by making the Laws useless through the infractions themselves, they wish once
again, today, to rob us of the fruits, as it were, aborted, of a vague and
faltering tolerance; a thousand interested or charmed voices make themselves
heard on their behalf around the Magistrate, and are appealing against us:
the past is veiled from him with care, our former successes, which have
glorified the French Book Trade in all Europe, are hidden from him; no-one
speaks of our decline, of our ruin, in short of the cunningly combined causes
which imposed them.
A trade authorised by the Law, and which is only condemned by the Offenders
against this Law, is portrayed to him as new, criminal and unjust endeavours;
a Trade which has never ceased to exist in France, insofar as the Administrators
of the Book Trade have more or less known, or followed, the true principles.
If unjust prejudices, born out of slander, are spread in the Capital and
amongst the Men of Letters; if our adversaries do not stop applying to us and to
our trade the most indecent and the most offensive epithets; so jealous of our
smallest successes, they endeavour to inspire the Officers in Power with their
animosity, the Magistrate who enters into the profession of the Book Trade,
completely surrounded by our natural enemies, will he be able to refrain from a
few critical remarks against some active and industrious Citizens, who are wanted,
absolutely, stifled.
At the distance we are from the Minister who must decide our fate, how will
we manage to overturn the obstinate efforts of our adversaries? Nevertheless our
civil status, the fortune and the honour of our Families depend on his decision;
these interests are pressing, it is important to us to shed light on it: but,
to do this with the decency that is appropriate to his eminent qualities, we have
had to assure ourselves beforehand of the justice of our cause: this is why we
have drawn up a Chart on this matter, faithful to the facts and principles avowed
by the Laws and by sane Policy: we have submitted it to the enlightened gaze of
the most Learned Jurisconsults; only one has signed, but all have commended our
methods, all have encouraged us to send our reclamations to the feet of the
illustrious Head of the Magistracy, whose knowledge and equity attract the
confidence and love of all good Citizens.
In this Memoir, written with a haste necessitated by the danger which
threatens us, we have demonstrated that the exclusive Right to manufacture and
sell any Work, is contrary to Common Right; which is not on any account based
on Natural Right, and which depends uniquely on the will of the Sovereign.
We have proved that through the Laws made in France on this subject, all
Privileges obtained without legitimate cause, are declared null and void, as they
exploited the authorities, that a Privilege, once it has expired, cannot be
extended, continued or renewed, unless the number of augmentations prescribed by
these Laws have been made to the Work that is the subject of it, and that in the
case where similar continuations may have been obtained, they are declared null
and void: that in such a way all the Works which are not under the guarantee of
a Privilege conforming to these rules, are free and belong in fact to
Chapter 1 Page 5
the industry in general, on the condition that the man who wants to take pleasure
in it, takes a non-exclusive Permission from the Government, which also leaves to
all others the power to obtain similar for it in competition for the same Works.
We have now put forward the true principles on Literary Property, and we have
proved that it cannot be attacked by these wise and beneficial Laws; we have shown
through consistent facts and through the History of the National Book Trade, that
in the times when these Laws were in force, the Trade of our Books in Foreign
Countries was raised to such a high point that it far surpassed the real and
relative merit of these Books and of our French Literature at that time.
We have demonstrated that just at the moment when the Booksellers of Paris
succeeded in creating an illusion to such an extent that Infractions of the Laws
were protected from these very Laws, this Trade suffered a destruction so rapid
that in spite of the progress of Education and of the Sciences, it was necessary,
by means of increased Judgements, to successively abolish half the Printing Houses
of the Kingdom, whilst, by a singular and striking contrast, there rose up
everywhere, in Foreign Countries and on our borders, Typographical establishments
uniquely intended for the printing and trade of our French Books.
We have finally proved that there is only one way of returning its natural
superiority to the National Book Trade, that is to put back into force just Laws,
to annihilate and prohibit exclusive titles obtained against the will of these Laws,
to return to the industry in general and to the freedom of speculations, the
Bibliography and the entirety of Literature. In that case the educated Bookseller
will choose at a glance from this immense number of volumes, those which he must
multiply and spread: then Privileges will be respected; the stimulus of industry
and even indigence will no longer serve as pretexts for counterfeits: and those,
who, through an unjust usurpation, would attempt to render favours legitimately
obtained from the Prince null and void, can be handed over to the severity of the
Rules.
If, on the contrary, the Administration adopted for a moment the narrow and
destructive principles of the Booksellers of the Capital; if the power to print
ancient Works was taken away from the Booksellers of the Provinces, and the Books
which have enjoyed the term of a legitimate Privilege, what would be left of their
industry? All Authors, as it is known, give themselves over to the Booksellers of
Paris and only have this path by which to make their Works known. It would
therefore, in that case, be necessary to eliminate the Printing Houses of the
Provinces, to sacrifice the National Book Trade to a few individuals in the
Capital, to give up trade with Foreign Countries, to see the French Printing
Houses swarming at our Neighbours and furnishing all of Europe with the very
Works written in our Language; it would be necessary to renounce the progress of
public Instruction within the Kingdom, and to upset all the Citizens of the
Provinces with the high price of Books and the difficulty of procuring them. Such
are the irreparable ills which are evidently born from the system which the
Booksellers of Paris endeavour to have adopted under the pretext of the false
rights they have extorted: the History of the Book Trade of late has only too
greatly demonstrated these disastrous effects.
WE IMPLORE the illustrious Head of the Magistracy, at whose feet we have just
placed our reflections, to return the vigour to the true Laws of the Book Trade,
and to consider that a wise Policy always increases the points of distribution
of commodities of primary necessity, very far away from making the circulation of
them stem from a single centre and a small number of Officers; soon they will be
congratulating themselves for having returned life to the Trade of the Bookseller,
a Trade so important to the Nation and so deserving of its care and attention.
Chapter 1 Page 35
II. PROPOSAL.
On Ownership in the Book Trade. It is conferred by
Privilege and cannot be separated from it. It conforms
entirely to that of other Trade Privileges.
This is the subject about which the Booksellers of Paris have
cried out with the greatest vehemence. By disguising it in a
thousand clouds, the Author of their Memoir makes the greatest
efforts of genius to present it in a favourable light.
The composition of a Book, whatever it may be, he says, is a
genuine creation. That is not always true; but we will not contradict
him. He adds: to challenge the Author about his right to dispose of
it, would be to attack his existence. We do not believe that such an
unjust idea would occur to anyone. It was thus totally useless to
use two whole pages to prove a right that no-one contests. But it was
with a view to concluding that the Bookseller, who has bought the
manuscript from an Author, would be substituted in his right and
represents, in this respect, the Author himself. Which is again quite
obvious and has no need of further proof.
The difficulty is not, therefore, in knowing if a Manuscript work
belongs to its Author, but in deciding if this Author, (or the
Bookseller representing him), once he has given his Work to the Public,
and that, to say as much, he has made it a necessity for them, has the
right to prevent this same Public from multiplying copies of it. In
order to resolve this difficulty, we propose the following two
questions to the Booksellers of Paris.
1º. The Author of a Work, or the Bookseller, legitimate purchaser
of his Manuscript, having only obtained a simple Permission, and not
an exclusive Privilege; can they be opposed when other Booksellers
reprint this same Book? Can they seize their editions and pursue them
like counterfeiters?
2º Is it legitimately permitted to reprint, in the Kingdom, Books
published Abroad?
But we must save our adversaries from the embarrassment of the reply.
Chapter 1 Page 36
When the inventor or the possessor of whichever object it may
be, decides to display it to the Public, he conveys to them, at the
same time, the right, not to take possession of the original, but
most certainly to imitate or copy it, if the object is useful or
enjoyable for them.
It is therefore obvious that the proprietor of a Manuscript,
who has sold and distributed copies of it to the Public, without
having obtained an exclusive Privilege from the Government, has no
reason to complain, if those who have bought these copies have
reproductions made of them at will; for he has transferred, through
this sale, a property equal to the only kind of property he could
have had.
It is, therefore, only through the one exclusive Privilege
granted by the Government that the exclusive right to multiply and
sell the copies of a Work exists, in such a way that the property of
a Manuscript is spread by the sale or the transfer of copies, whilst
the property of the Privilege is retained in spite of this sale. It
is very necessary to distinguish these two sorts of property, if one
wants to be heard.
For in the case where the Author has obtained no Privilege at
all, the Bookseller, purchaser of his Manuscript, can only have bought
the first type of property from him, and when he sells and distributes
the copies of his edition, it must be considered as conveying both in
multiplicity and detail, the property which he alone had bought, and,
as it were, in bulk. By giving up his property to him, the Author has
transferred to him the right to obtain from it, through his industry
and his trade, a more or less large profit, following the merit or
the success of the Work; but he could not give to him the exclusive
right to copy or print his Work and to sell copies of it, as he did not
have it himself.
These proposals are likely not to be able to be contested and
it should be noted that of all the inventions, recipes and discoveries
that could be imagined in the Arts, literary compositions are the only
ones for which these controversies have been stirred up and no-one up
until now has thought that this was a theft from the inventor of some
object, to imitate or copy it, as without having supplied himself with
an exclusive Privilege,
Chapter 1 Page 37
he has rendered his invention public through its sale or
otherwise.
Have the famous Academicians of the Academy of Sciences in
Paris ever been accused of injustice, when being admitted into
the ateliers of the Arts, they go to spy on the progress and
methods of the most able Masters; to steal away, as it were,
their secrets from them, to then divulge them and expose these
inventions to the Public, so that each person, by imitating them,
may work with success for the general benefit of society. Would
anyone dare to accuse them of having been, through their
behaviour, the instigators of that which the Booksellers call,
in their field, a heinous robbery?
The Art of the Men of Letters, Art par excellence, this Art
so necessary for the public education and for the progress of all
the other Arts, would it be, therefore, the only one that we would
want to burden with the fetters of an imaginary property? And the
invention of Printing, instead of favouring the progress of their
works, has it not only brought further obstacles? For before this
period, this supposed right, which granted Authors the unlimited
right to make and to distribute copies of their Works, had not yet
been imagined. One sees, on the contrary, that each person was
able, at his own will, to transcribe and sell the copies of the
Works of the Scholars which he had bought.
[...]
The same principles, which guide the trade of printed Books,
existed before the advent of Printing, in the
Chapter 1 Page 38
trade of Manuscripts, because the method of multiplying
copies could not increase, or decrease the rights of real
property.
For, if in these early times a man of letters, having bought
a Manuscript for 50 livres, had the right to multiply copies of
it at will and sell them, he could therefore make in the sale of
a single one of these copies this high price that he had paid for
the original and he had, furthermore, as at present, a profit
proportional to the number of copies that he had had made.
If the man who, today, buys a copy of a printed Book wants
to make multiple copies of it to sell them on, he can only do this
by printing; and if he has bought at a low price the copy which
served as a copy for him, it is clear that he will also only be
able to sell each of the copies that he will have had printed at
a low price and that the reimbursement of his advances, as well as
the profit of his speculation, will only be able to occur, as in
the first case, on the sale of a greater or smaller number of
copies; the costs of his whole edition make up, therefore, the
equivalent of the outlay that the Manuscript Merchants used to
make in the past, both for the first copy and for the transcriptions
that they used to have made of it.
It should be concluded from all this, Iº. That since the discovery
of the art of Printing, as previously, there has never existed any
natural exclusive right under whichever pretext that it may be, of
invention, creation or other, by which an individual may assume the
prerogative to alone provide for the whole of society a useful or
enjoyable object. 2º. That it could not be permitted for anyone to
make efforts of genius to create, through his industry, new wants for
men, if the result of this industry was an exclusive right to fulfil it.
3º. That the sale or publication of a work or some invention or other,
is a transfer, full and entire, of the enjoyment, for the benefit of
the Public, which carries with it, by necessity, the right to imitate or
copy at will. 4º. That if the property of the Inventors or Authors
brought with it the exclusive right to sell to the Public the enjoyment
of their discoveries, this property would be of the sort that, while not
ceasing to dispose of it, the Author would always conserve it,
Chapter 1 Page 39
whole and intact; in such a way that every Inventor, and his family,
would be born for ever privileged proprietors, and at the same time
perpetual owners and sellers of things that they would have been
pleased to give birth to. In this strange supposition, there would
be nothing, neither in the Arts, nor in the Sciences, for which the
exclusive property of manufacture and sale could not be claimed.
It is therefore consistent that the Sovereign alone can, to
reward industry, grant to Inventors the exclusive ability to sell
to his Subjects, during a limited period, the contribution and the
enjoyment of their inventions; and that the title given by the
Prince is the unique foundation of this exclusive right, which
naturally does not form any kind of property.
After having settled, on solid principles, the true nature of
Literary Property, we must come to the second of the questions that
we put to our adversaries, relating to new Works that belong to
foreign Countries. If they reject the principles that we have just
laid out, they would not be able to resolve this question in one
way or another, without falling into a manifest contradiction, either
with the system that they wish to establish, or with their own
behaviour.
If they say that one can legitimately reprint foreign books in
France, this maxim will be diametrically opposed to their system of
property; because foreign Booksellers have also acquired their Works
from Authors, with the same rights and in the same way that it is
done in Paris, and it is no more permitted to steal (to make use of
their expressions) from one's neighbours than from one's fellow citizens.
If, on the contrary, they support the negative, one can rightly
throw back against them all the odious epithets that they have used;
because it is a fact that half the Books that they appropriate are Works
taken away from foreign Booksellers, or from those of the Provinces,
and over which they have no kind of right at all.
Chapter 1 Page 40
The comparisons used by the Author of their Memoir
to compare property in the Book Trade to that of a possession,
of a house, are just as false and illusory as his other
arguments. The Bookseller who has acquired a Manuscript and
who has made a print of it, certainly has a well-founded and
fully legal property over this Manuscript and over the edition
that is in his Shops. This property can in all respects be
compared to that of a house, of a piece of land and any other
possession acquired legitimately. But as soon as he has sold,
in all, or in part, his copies to the Public and he has gained
payment from them, they no longer belong to him, but to those
who bought them; and if they are not founded on a title granted
by the Government, he certainly does not conserve any kind of
right over the copies which were sold, through which he may
limit the uses and employment that the buyers would like to put
them to.
___________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 41
That which we have just developed is more than sufficient
to demonstrate that the right to print and to sell, exclusively,
a Book which has been made public, is born from a Privilege alone
and not from the acquisition and the possession of the Manuscript,
seeing as the Author himself does not have this right on any
account, if he does not obtain it from the Government. To dare
to support the contrary would be to accuse wise and enlightened
Governments of the most absurd and most revolting injustice.
__________________________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 42
For it is clear that in this false hypothesis Letters of
Privilege should in no way grant this right, but only
confirm it; that they should recognise it in perpetuity
and that it would be an attack on natural property to limit
and restrain it. It would be an even greater advantage,
according to this erroneous principle, not to adorn all new
Books with an exclusive Privilege and only to grant them
simple Permissions to print as usually happens.
Let the Booksellers of Paris forget, for a moment, the
idea of monopolisation that suggests to them an ambition too
vast and too little enlightened; let them remember these
happy times when the Bookseller was especially brought before
the respectable Magistrate who had just taken up a place in
the Council of our Monarch. Under his administration, the
Privileges were made
___________________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 43
rare; they were only granted for Books when the undertaking
deserved encouragement, or which, having cost the author
__________________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 44
long and difficult labours, had earned him this reward:
continuations were constantly refused and works
_______________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 45
of an inferior class were normally only endowed with
simple Permissions. This enlightened Magistrate, who
was the Protector of the Book Trade and of the Men of
Letters, whose beloved name is only pronounced with
reverence and emotion by all the Booksellers of the Kingdom,
would he have been ignorant of the principles of common
right and of public interest?
If the Man of Letters, not content with the real and
legitimate property that he has over his works, wants to
leave the common and general class of ordinary properties,
to give, to his own, an indefinite and limitless extension
and that he intends to subject the whole of society and
even future generations to appealing to him and to his
family, under the pretext that he has created, invented,
given being, existence, life to his Works, from this it will
necessarily follow that all imitation will be forbidden for
ever and that on penalty of committing a manifest theft, it
will not be permitted for anyone to take advantage of the
industry of others, neither for his need, nor for his
pleasure, without addressing himself to the inventor and
having paid him the tax that he would like to impose on him.
It will result from this that every inventor, without
exception, will be able to make the same claim; that the
most mediocre invention and the most sublime effort of
genius will have an equal right to this strange prerogative
because they are equally the product of the imagination
which gave birth to them.
If such an absurd system were able to gain ground, we
would see reclamations of ownership rise up on all sides.
There are no arts, no professions, where one does not see a
multitude of individuals wanting to assume an exclusive right
over some object of which they or their ancestors claim to
have been the inventors. Not a new fashion, not a jewel would
appear, for which those
__________________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 46
who had conceived them would not want to forbid their imitation and
sale to other men. And, certainly, this claim would be less dangerous
than that of the Booksellers of Paris. One can, with no inconvenience,
go without frivolous things; if they are too expensive and too few in
number, but most Books are of absolute necessity and it is interesting
that they are spread everywhere and at reasonable prices.
Would it be the sum of the troubles and the labour that would
have been able to establish this singular kind of property? But there
are Authors who only produce a few slim Works over a long period of
time and by dint of solicitudes, whilst others produce rapidly and
with ease numerous volumes. Would this be the merit of the products?
But why wouldn't the mediocre Writer have just as much right as the
most enlightened Author?
Every man owes to society the tribute of his physical and
intellectual abilities in exchange for that which he receives from
the other individuals who comprise it. The man of genius, who
communicates his ideas to society, is only returning, in exchange,
the product of those ideas that he has received from society. And
the man who, by publishing the fruit of his research, would claim
that his discoveries could never be enjoyed without taking recourse
to him, and who would form, in this way, the plan of making use of
his contemporaries and posterity, would be an unjust man to whom
society should refuse everything.
We do not claim here to go against the just property which
belongs to genius. Nothing belongs to us more than that which our
labours, our devices, our observations and our calculations have
allowed us to discover or imagine. But once we have received
payment for them, be it in money, or in glory, all our fellow
citizens, all men, have the right to freely enjoy the gift that
we have given them.
_____________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 47
By accepting the system of property of the Booksellers of Paris,
the Letters from the Chancellery would be useless.
_________________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 48
For, if the Authors' prerogative was able to confer the exclusive
right to multiply and sell for ever the copies of their Works,
censorship and approbation (so necessary to prevent the publication
of bad Books) would alone suffice to leave to the Proprietors of
the Manuscripts the power to exercise their supposed right to print
them perpetually and exclusively.
Very far from a similar claim would be favourable for Literature,
it would bring with it, inevitably, failure. The circulation of ideas
and of discoveries would be annihilated, Books printed would be left
ignored in their own cradle; the difficulty of getting hold of them
would slow down the advancement and progress of the Sciences, the
honourable Profession of the Men of Letters would no longer exist
except through shameful misappropriations. The greed of a thousand
mercenary Writers would denude the true merit and would suffocate
genius. If one substitutes money and cupidity for honour, for
distinctions and for commendations, Literature will be degraded and
will no longer produce anything great. The man who devotes himself
to his country, as well as he who dedicates himself to defend it,
must live from his trade; but they will serve it badly, if, driven
by avarice, they lose sight of glory, the most flattering of rewards.
Since the exclusive right of manufacture and sale can only be
imparted in accordance with the Privileges granted by the Sovereign,
it is clear that those of the Book Trade fall into the class of
other Trade privileges. Nothing distinguishes them from the other;
they come from the same principle and have the same aim. The Government,
by granting the one and the other has equally in mind to grant a
reward to talents and to give some encouragement to useful enterprises.
The Author of the "Memoir of the Booksellers of Paris" makes efforts
to find an imaginary difference between these Privileges. He puts forward,
first of all, the pre-eminence of literary products over
_______________________________
[...]
Chapter 1 Page 49
those of the Arts. But this pre-eminence has no bearing on the
matter. It does not prevent a printed Book, however sublime it
may be, from becoming an object of trade and from having to
follow the rules.
The inventor of a machine, of a new material, or of such
other thing that it may be, is no less the master, possessor of
his invention, than the Author is of the Book that he has created,
whatever difference there may be between the worth of one and of
the other. There are even cases where the first would better
deserve to be privileged, because often, to succeed, he has been
obliged to make numerous expensive attempts.
The same Author proposes that it is easier to counterfeit
Books than a mechanical invention and that for this reason the
Privileges of the first should be more strictly protected by the
Government. Although this assertion may be without foundation,
one will not argue over it with him. One has never claimed to
fight against legally obtained Privileges.
He adds again that it is useful to counterfeit a mechanical
invention because it is the way to perfect it. But as a Book can
only be made so by the Author, it is to remove his means of doing
this, by multiplying editions without his consent. It seemed,
first of all, that this Writer, who has written so much, declaimed
so much, poured out so much abuse to stand up for, to extend the
literary properties, makes very little of the case of those of the
other classes. Let us allow him this discrepancy, but not the
absurdity of the consequence; for the more a Book will be multiplied
and spread, the more the Author will find strength in the welcome of
the Public and in the judgement that the large numbers of Readers
will have made of it, to rework and improve his Work.
The "Memoir of the Booksellers of Paris" contains, on this
subject, a throng of other arguments just as unwise and as
inconsequent; it would be to descend into puerility to pick out all
of them; let us abandoned them to their own futility.
Translation by: Laura Hough (pp. 2-5, 35-49)