Dear Brother, It seems only right to inform your readers that the abridgment of the Memoir of Daniel Mann, referred to in your last number, was made by a Christian lady in the South of France, a member of the Free Church. This lady writes for the “Eglise Liber” and furnished her narrative to that Journal. Her object was to supply an article adapted for the generality of French readers. The tract referred to was reprinted from the four or five numbers of the Journal referred to, the publisher undertaking to print it as a tract before he knew from what source it was obtained.
The right of translation not having been reserved, no reflection can be cast upon the lady who abridged the narrative; but as we are not only to recognize legal rights, but to act graciously one towards the other, the London publisher has since been communicated with and compensation been offered, in case he considered his rights were infringed upon. This he declined.
J. N. D.
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CORRESPONDENCE.
The printer's name was through his mistake omitted on the first few hundred copies which were issued. When this error was discovered, it was immediately corrected, as publications cannot legally be circulated in France without the name of the printer.
Yours faithfully, Oct. 11th. B.
[The foregoing statement is printed as explanatory of the circumstances. Every unbiased reader will see that it is no real justification. If a Christian writer does not reserve his legal rights, this leaves it open to any one to translate but not to mutilate. I do not agree with “B.,” that this is a question of acting graciously or not, 1but rather a plain moral wrong. Even a worldly person of upright mind ought to feel the impropriety of such mutilation without leave first obtained on good and candid and Christian grounds. A money compensation might suit the world but hardly a Christian: the publisher did right to refuse.
As to the general duty of seeking to spread testimony to Christ, and especially gospel truth, in the French as in all other tongues, I warmly sympathize with every such effort if directed after a godly sort. I should counsel every servant of the Lord to reserve no rights; but this gives no sanction to perpetrate a wrong.—Ed. Β. T.]