Piracy_ The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates - Adrian Johns [93]
Dubliners thought their practice worth defending. Their defenses were both specific, upholding particular projects, and general, relating to the nature and purpose of reprinting itself. Faulkner thus pointed outcorrectly- that only in a country "whose Booksellers cannot pretend to any Property in what to publish either by Law or Custom" could a complete edition of Swift's works be published. In England too many different proprietors existed for the many individual pamphlets to be compiled into one collection. More general defenses often invoked a combination of textual quality and what was called "nationality"As early as 171o George Berkeley accused the London trade of attempting to stifle a rising rival that might "bring some benefit to poor Ireland." In 1736 Jonathan Swift told Londoner Benjamin Motte, who had won an injunction to prevent Faulkner from sending his reprints of Swift's works into England, that the treatment of the Dublin trade amounted to "absolute Oppression," entirely of apiece with England's general treatment of Ireland. "If I were a Bookseller in this Town," Swift averred, "I would use all the safe Means to reprint London Books, and run them to any Town, in England that I could."16 Later, David Hume, resenting what he saw as Andrew Millar's "false Intelligence" about his History, would say that if Millar were still alive, then "I shoud be tempted to go over to Dublin, and publish there an edition, which I hope woud entirely discredit the present one."AndJames Williams-a pirate even by Dublin standards-boasted of his edition of Goldsmith's Animated Nature that it would cause his own name to be "inrolled with those of Tonson, Millar, and Eoulis; who, at the same time that they have enriched themselves, and contributed to propagate science, have done honour to their respective countries." 17 The pseudonymous Roger Spy argued that buying books printed in London would be "instrumental in ruining Ireland." And finally, in May 1785 the speaker of the Irish House of Commons rejected the adoption of English copyright law because it would "put an end to the printing business in this country."18
Contemporaries wanting to know more could turn to the Irish press, which regularly defended reprinting on broadly mercantilist grounds. These newspaper arguments could become quite detailed as to the political economy of the practice. George Faulkner thus used his own Dublin Journal to defend his reprinting of Smollett's History despite paying forty guineas to Rivington for advance sheets. `All the Money of the Dublin edition will be laid out here," he insisted, "among the Letterfounders, Paper Makers, Printers, Rag-gatherers, and other Poor People depending on those Branches of Business." On the other hand, money spent on London editions would "drain this poor Country of so much Cash, and be a means of destroying the above Manufactures, and enrich one London bookseller." Of course, the Dublin printing would also be of better quality than the English, would appear earlier, and would cost half the price. A sympathetic Edinburgh author agreed, arguing that only reprinting enabled worthwhile books like William Robertson's Charles V to be bought by "people of middling fortune." (The example was carefully chosen: Robertson had received a famously huge sum for the copyright.) Altogether, Faulkner concluded, thinking probably of Richardson, his endeavor was not only away to support Irish manufactures, but also served to "frustrate the evil Designs that have been made to destroy Printing in this nation, many attempts having been made for that Purpose.'"
These kinds of claims clearly took shape and force from "patriot" politics. They came together most emphatically as those politics approached their zenith. At the end of the 1770s the success of the American Revolution exacerbated calls for change.