THE FIRST-BORN OF EGYPT.

WHEN life is forgot, and night hath power,
And mortals feel no dread;

When silence and slumber rule the hour,
And dreams are round the head;

God shall smite the first-born of Egypt's race,
The destroyer shall enter each dwelling-place-
Shall enter and choose his dead.

"To your homes," said the leader of Israel's host,
"And slaughter a sacrifice;

Let the life-blood be sprinkled on each door-post,
Nor stir till the morn arise,

And the Angel of Vengeance shall pass you by,
He shall see the red stain, and shall not come nigh
Where the hope of your household lies."

The people hear, and they bow them low-
Each to his house hath flown;

The lamb is slain, and with blood they go

And sprinkle the lintel-stone;

And the doors they close when the sun hath set,
But few in oblivious sleep forget

The judgment to be done.

'Tis midnight-yet they hear no sound
Along the lone still street;

No blast of a pestilence sweeps the ground,
No tramp of unearthly feet

Nor rush as of harpy wing goes by,

But the calm moon floats in the cloudless sky,

'Mid her wan light clear and sweet.

Once only, shot like an arrowy ray,
A pale blue flash was seen,

It pass'd so swift, the eye scarce could say
That such a thing had been:

Yet the beat of every heart was still,

And the flesh crawl'd fearfully, and chill,
And back flow'd every vein.

The courage of Israel's bravest quail'd
At the view of that awful light,

Though knowing the blood of their offering avail'd

To shield them from its might:

They felt 'twas the Spirit of Death had past,

That the brightness they saw his cold glance had cast

On Egypt's land that night :

That his fearful eye had unwarn'd struck down

In the darkness of the grave,

The hope of that empire, the pride of its crown,
The first-born of lord and slave:-

The lovely, the tender, the ardent, the gay;
Where were they?-all wither'd in ashes away,
At the terrible death-glare it gave.

From the couches of slumber ten thousand cries
Burst forth 'mid the silence dread-

The youth by his living brother lies

Sightless, and dumb, and dead!

The infant lies cold at his mother's breast,
She had kiss'd him alive as she sank to rest,

She awakens-his life hath fled!

We live in strange times, when narrow prejudice, stale custom, and misty doubt, are arranged in triumphant warfare against the most rational deductions and the clearest decisions of common sense. It is in vain that we are placed on the proud intellectual eminence of modern times, thrown up by the accumulated labours of gifted spirits for so many ages. It is in vain that we glory, and justly glory, in the progressive emancipation of the mind from the trammels of superstition, and the degrading state of a blind submission to spiritual or temporal authority-if we cannot make our advantages available, and, in yielding homage to rule and law, be satisfied that we submit only to what is just and reasonable. When this is not the case, but, on the contrary, the regulations by which we hold liberty or property are capricious, narrow, and revolting to sense and policy, the evil is not less mischievous to the individual than to the entire community, by making contemptible the very laws towards which all should feel respect as well as obedience. No social compact is worth any thing where there is this variance. Man is not in our times, Heaven be praised for it! the passive instrument he once was; he has put on a character more consistent with his grade in the creation, and the knowledge of those inherent rights which Nature informs him are inalienably his own. The mischief, then, of legal decisions not grounded in reason, must be evident, even if based upon precedent; but how much more so when precedent itself is rational and correct, and novelty and absurdity make their appearance hand-in-hand together to overturn it.

It may be easily conjectured that I refer to the late decisions respecting literary property. The two leading Reviews, the Edinburgh and Quarterly, have both agreed in opinion upon the extraordinary doctrine which has emanated from the Court of Chancery on this subject, -a doctrine subversive of the right of property, contrary to former decisions, pernicious in effect, and absurd in practice. After what has been said in these able publications, it might seem almost superfluous to add any thing more; the Edinburgh, in particular, having shewn that former decrees of the Court of Chancery for the last century were diametrically the reverse of those of the present Chancellor, and that works both libellous and immoral, such as no author would now pub

lish, have been protected, as regards a property in them, in that Court. The Edinburgh, taking up the question in a view strictly legal, has impugned the present practice as a professional writer would do, by quoting former cases, and among them the piracy of the libellous and immoral Miscellanies of Pope, Swift, and others. In this mode I have no intention to second it; but there are two or three important reasons notwithstanding, why the subject should be noticed at present. In the first place, it seems tantamount to a duty that every literary work should, as much as possible, expose the serious evil of the new doctrine, and contribute a modicum to the exposure of its fallacy. In the next place, an instance somewhat different from the former, but of a character equally singular, has occurred in the Vice-Chancellor's Court too recently to have been noticed in the before-mentioned publications; and lastly, it is beneficial to society to second public opinion on such a question, upon grounds which have nothing to do with law, but are derived from universally received principles of justice, within the boundaries of which all law decisions must at no very distant period be circumscribed.

The success of an application to the Court of Chancery for an injunction to restrain a pirate, or, in plainer terms, a thief, who deprives another of his property, and deals openly in the stolen wares, never should depend on the tendency of the writings stolen, because the application to that Court should simply be considered as a temporary protection for a disputed property, the nature of which, and the ownership also, is to be subsequently judged of elsewhere. In the view of the Chancellor, a book ought to be but as so much waste paper of a certain value, more or less, that constituted a property. He is placed in the situation of a trustee of a litigated property, to prevent injury, which he must hold entire until the question at issue between the parties is decided by an arbitrator. Should the work be immoral, it is part of the question for the Court of Law to decide, and for that alone. The final decision may be that the work is of such a nature as that an action cannot be sustained. "You, Mr. Author, or Bookseller, have been robbed, but you have been robbed of contraband goods, as has clearly appeared in evidence, and therefore you can have no satisfaction here, for, that which the law cannot recognise as a property, it cannot secure to you." Such seems to have been the spirit of practice until Lord Eldon, placing himself in the situation of a Judge and Jury of the Law Courts, refused the plaintiff's application, and made himself the censor of literary works-thereby, if bad, according to his notions or doubts, indirectly sanctioning piracy, and aiding the circulation in the cheapest possible form, and in augmented numbers, by the robber. It is true, the plaintiff may still apply to a Law Court; but, in the interim, the pirate sells edition upon edition, and, before the trial can be brought on, he has achieved his object-sold all he might ever be able to sell, if he but used common diligence, and rendered even the expenses of an action at law a useless waste of money. Here, then, is an evil, confessedly of great magnitude, removable by following the former practice of the Court and the simplest dictates of reason—a path, indeed, so plain that a child could not err in it—and the difficulty seems to me how to find an excuse for deviating from the beaten track. If a book be immoral, giving it tenfold circulation, by allowing its

piracy, must be infinitely more pernicious than permitting the man who at all events is the rightful owner of the property, to hold it, bad as it may be, till a Court of Law decides against him. In Chancery it seems that the reverse of the maxim "Of two evils choose the least" is to become an established precedent.

Who, in such cases, if the Chancellor is made a judge of literature as well as equity, is to fix the limit when he shall cease to have doubts? The property of the subject is to lie open to plunder, because the caprice, political prejudice, incapacity, or what not, of a Chancellor, may make him refuse it the instant protection of the law. I deny the ability of nine Chancellors out of ten to form correct opinions on literary works. Men bred to the law, who have grown old in the pursuit, toilsome and arduous as it is, are the persons in society the worst constituted of any to form opinions on literary matters: they have all their lives been employed with line and rule, upon case and fact, compressing their energies into one narrow pursuit, and cramped within boundaries over which imagination dares not cast an excursive glance. They are to act only upon facts; and in proportion as they would climb to high eminence in their profession, they must stifle every feeling that would lead them aside into scenes of fancy or fiction; they must be deaf to the voice of the charmer, "charming never so wisely;" the “ spoils of time,” in the page of any but law history, they must not contemplate; the poetry of life must be a dead letter to them; and they must abhor the pages of romance, and the very book of Nature itself. Is it not likely, therefore, with such, that the visions of the poet, and the lively scenes of the novelist, run but a bad chance of fair and honest interpretation? Twelve men, who had not been indurated by the character of such a pursuit against the impressions of external nature, and who are still governed by the dictates of sober sense, are infinitely to be preferred as judges in such matters. Moreover there is no earthly reason why authors or booksellers should be excluded from the safeguard, as to property, that their fellow-subjects receive, from the first to the last step that the law can afford. If the great names that now reflect so much glory on England had been involved in the doubts of a Chancellor, how would their noblest works have been treated. Let us imagine a pirate of Spenser's Faery Queen brought up to Lincoln's Inn, what justice could the author expect? how many stanzas would be found exceptionable! Milton would be esteemed as worthless as Byron in "Cain ;" and Pope would be lost past redemption, were it for his " Eloise" alone-more especially, perhaps, as she was under guardianship at the time she is supposed to have encouraged her lover's passion! But if such would be the fate of works of fancy, what have we not to fear for political publications that may taunt the very Chancellor himself, his friends and supporters? How may the cause of truth be injured, and property in a work of such a nature be deteriorated, under pretence of its being libellous! It is not meant to insinuate that the present Chancellor would so act, but it is possible he or his successors might; and what sort of security for property is that which remains at the mercy of one man's prejudices?

But every work may now be printed that will remunerate the robber; and this brings me to the last most curious decision in the Vice

Chancellor's court. I say any work may be printed, because it appears that injunctions are only now to be granted after it is shewn by a Court of Law that they are deserving protection; and then, when an injunction is not of the smallest advantage it may be had on being applied for-the Court of Law, be it observed, having previously passed judgment on the pirate for the self-same piracy! All the time, to be sure, the thief sells the stolen property; but he is, if the proceeding in a Law Court be against him, to declare to the Court of Chancery, on an application from the party robbed, the profit he has made by the theft up to that time. A notable shift in justice; thus making the thief disgorge the plunder, or what he may choose to say is the amount of it. Thus, too, the quality of the goods purloined are made to constitute the guilt, or otherwise, of the taker! The persons who pirate books are known to be not worth sixpence; and it is notorious, that a penny can never be obtained from this low class of pilferers, let the future decisions of the Law Courts be what they may. Responsible and respectable booksellers hold such conduct in a just abhorrence. Thus sagely, therefore, has the court managed, that the injured can have no real remedy-instead of protecting the property till trial in a Law Court, where, if deemed immoral or libellous, no redress would be given, and a penalty might afterwards attach to the publication. The rightful proprietor may, indeed, marvel at the wisdom of such a decision-but I will state the proceeding itself.

Soon after the three last Cantos of Don Juan issued from the press, a low tradesman immediately printed and circulated a pirated edition; an injunction was applied for and granted by the Court of Chancery, to restrain him from selling the pirated copies. He had the hardihood, however, to come personally into court and apply for the injunction to be set aside, on the ground that the book was of an immoral tendency, and that therefore he had a right to print and circulate as many copies as he pleased. The Court, it is to be presumed, in its great zeal for the public good and its high regard for public morals, granted the prayer of the pirate, with the proviso, that he kept an account of the profits until a Court of Law should decide whether the work was of a nature that entitled it to protection. Now, it being clear that the party who first applied for the injunction was the rightful owner of the work, good or bad as it might be, the line pointed out by reason and common sense indicated, that, until it was found by a verdict in a Law Court not entitled to protection, the real owner had a claim upon the justice of the country. Indeed this can be the only use of an application to Chancery—namely, that a temporary relief may be instantly afforded, until the question is decided elsewhere. The Vice-Chancellor, however, did not let the character of the book rest upon his own doubts of its tendency; but he thought "the Court had no original jurisdiction in such cases, and that it only interfered to prevent an injury." Now, if the work be unimpeachable, a Court of Law gives the remedy, until which, injury is prevented by the interdiction of the work to the pirate; this would seem to be the proper course of proceeding, for it is surely more reasonable that the rightful owner should be secured until the question has been brought to an issue, than that the plunderer should be suffered to circulate a cheap edition, for the copy-right of which the real owner had probably paid a large sum of