human
for a newspaper or a periodical, is as properly entitled to a pecuniary recompense, as a doctor, or a lawyer, or a clergy-man, for professional services; or, as a merchant or a mechanic for his transferable property. This is a simple proposition, which nobody disputes. The rate of such compensation must be a matter of agreement. As between author and publisher, custom seems to have fixed on what an arithmetician would call
gpt
as the basis of the bargain; and the question of adjustment is simplified down to