Matthew Arnold, Civilization in the United States: First and Last Impressions of America.

[101] to just the same thing. The American refusal of copyright to us poor English souls is just the proceeding which would naturally commend itself to Murdstone and Quinion; and the way in which Mr. Conant justifies and applauds the proceeding, and continues to justify and applaud it, in disregard of all that one may say, and boldly turns the tables upon England, is just the way in which Murdstone and Quinion, after regulating copyright in the American fashion, would wish and expect to be backed up. In Mr. Conant they have a treasure: illi robber et es triplex, indeed. And no doubt a few Americans, highly civilized individuals, “hopping backwards and forwards over the Atlantic,” much disapprove of these words and works of Mr. Conant and his constituents. But can there be constant groups of children of light, joined in an elegant order, everywhere throughout the Union? for, if there were, would not their sense of equity, and their sense of delicacy, and even their sense of the ridiculous, be too strong, even in this very matter of copyright, for Mr. Conant and his constituents?

But on the creation and propagation of such groups the civilized life of America depends for its future, as the civilized life of our own country, too, depends for its future upon the same