A PLEA FOR AUTHORS, MAY 1838
FAILING impartial measure to dispense To every suitor, Equity is lame; And social Justice, stript of reverence For natural rights, a mockery and a shame; Law but a servile dupe of false pretence, If, guarding grossest things from common claim Now and for ever, She, to works that came From mind and spirit, grudge a short-lived fence. “What! lengthened privilege, a lineal tie, For ‘Books’!” Yes, heartless Ones, or be it proved 10 That ’tis a fault in Us to have lived and loved Like others, with like temporal hopes to die; No public harm that Genius from her course Be turned; and streams of truth dried up, even at their source!