copy in a public library may be advantageously demanded. Would indeed that by any means a complete collection of every work printed and published could be secured! It would be worth any sacrifice. No such plea, however, can be made on behalf of more than one national library. Yet to this day the British Exchequer pays yearly upwards of £3000 to the Universities of Aberdeen, St. Andrews, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, the King's Inn Library, Dublin, and Sion College, London, for compensation for the withdrawal of similar privileges from them under the Copyright Act. Could their privileges be justified? Certainly not; nor would there be any reason for the award of similar compensations to the other libraries which still possess the rights to copies of every published work. The universities of the kingdom are otherwise assisted by the state, and the Faculties of Advocates can well provide for their own libraries.

The condition of registration and payment of fees is also a ground for complaint. As it is at present, a book of registry for the proprietorship in the copyright of books and assignment thereof is kept at the Stationers' Hall, and the proprietor of copyright of any book may make entry on the registry of the title of the book, the time of the first publication the name and place of abode of the publisher and of the proprietor of the copyright of the book, or of any portion of such copyright, upon payment of 5s. to the officer of the company. And every such registered proprietor may assign his interest, or any portion of it, by making entry in the book of registry of such assignment, and of the name and place of abode of the assignce, on payment of the like sum. It is a matter of fact, however, that though almost every book contains the words. "Entered at Stationers' Hall," only a small proportion of the books published are so registered; the reason for the neglect being, that registration serves no practical purpose, that it is too indefinite to be of any use as to the extent or duration of the copyright, that it is not of itself a conclusive evidence of title, and that it is not sufficient to prove that the book registered was actually written by the person who registered it, or that it is not a piracy. The fee also is too high. If copyright is to be maintained, some kind of registration is absolutely necessary; but it is scarcely desirable to maintain the same in the hall

of a company almost effete, whose very existence is almost unknown, and whose functions have been quite superseded by modern appliances. The Copyright Commissioners reasonably recommended the combination of registration with the deposit. of the book at the British Museum-a method which, whilst it would diminish labor and expense, would relieve that institution of the labor of hunting for books in booksellers' catalogues and advertisements. The registration would be effected by a registrar appointed for that purpose, whose duty would be to receive the copy of the book, to register the official receipt, and to give a copy thereof, certified by him to the person depositing the book, and the certified copy would be a primâ-facie evidence in courts of law of the publication and due registration of the work, and of the title to the copyright of the person named therein. A fee of one shilling would, in the opinion of the commissioners, be ample, if registration were made compulsory, to render the registration self-supporting. How far the registration of a book should involve the forfeiture of the copyright is a grave question. The recommendation of the commissioners, that proprietors of copyright should have no right to maintain any proceeding in respect of any thing made or done before registration, or in respect of any dealing subscquent to registration with things so made or done before registration, seem somewhat harsh and unreasonable. Would it not be sufficient to make non-registration penal, especially as this technicality has hitherto been so largely disregarded? The commissioners did not recommend the registration of paintings and drawings, so long as the property in the picture and the copyright of the same are vested in the same person, but that once the copyright is separated by agreement from the property of the picture, registration shall become necessary.

Registration and deposit as an evidence of copyright affect also international copyright, and they are the more irksome inasmuch as they touch persons residing in foreign countries and unacquainted with the laws of other countries. The French Government suggested that it should be sufficient for an author to comply with the laws of his own country. In the case of Belgium, with which France has concluded a convention on international copyright, French authors are authorized to

register, without deposit, their works at the office of the Belgian Legation in Paris. And this simple method should be pursued in every country. The commissioners proposed that registration of foreign works in England should no longer be required for the purpose of securing copyright there. The production of a copy of the foreign register, attested by a British diplomatic or consular officer, should be sufficient as a primâfacie evidence of title to the copyright of the foreign work. Also, that the obligation to deposit copies of foreign books, and other works for which authors may desire to obtain copyright in the British dominion, be also abandoned. The period fixed for translations under the copyright convention is proposed to be prolonged from five to ten years; and the right of translation and adaptation of dramatic pieces as well as the right of performance, are recommended to be placed on the same footing as the right of translations of literary works.

A few words on the infringement of copyright must suffice, for the question is one of jurisprudence rather than legislation. It should be remembered in relation to infringement, that plagiarism does not necessarily amount to an invasion of copyright, and that the author of a published work has no monopoly in the theories or speculations, or even in the results of observations therein stated, although no one, whether with or without acknowledgment, is permitted to take a material and substantial portion of the published work of another author for the purpose of making or improving a rival publication. What is an infringement of copyright is in every case one of considerable nicety. Mr. Justice Story, in his decision on Emerson's "North American Arithmetic," said: "The differences between different works are often of such a nature, that one is somewhat at a loss to say whether the difference is formal or substantial. In many cases the mere inspection of a work may at once betray the fact that it is borrowed from another author, with merely formal or colorable omissions or alterations. In other cases we cannot affirm that identity in the appearance or use of the materials is a sufficient and conclusive test of piracy, or that the one has been fraudulently or designedly borrowed from the other. In truth, in literature, in science, and in art there are and can be few if any things which in an abstract sense are

strictly new and original throughout. Every book in literature, science, and art borrows, and must necessarily borrow and use, much which was well known and used before. No man creates a new language for himself; at least, if he be a wise man, in writing a book he contents himself with the use of language already known and used and understood by others. The thoughts of every man are more or less a combination of what other men have thought and expressed, although they may be modified, excelled, or improved by her own genius or reflection. If no book would be the subject of copyright which was not new nor original in the elements of which it is composed, there could be no ground for any copyright in modern times, and we should be obliged to ascend very high, even in antiquity, to find a book entitled to such eminence. Virgil borrowed from Homer; Bacon drew from earlier as well as contemporary writers. Coke exhausted all the known learning of his profession; and even Shakespeare and Milton, so justly and proudly our boast as the brightest originals, would be found to have gathered much from the abundant stores of current knowl edge and classical studies in their days. What is La Place's great work but the combination of the processes and discoveries of the great mathematicians before his day, with his own extraordinary genius. What are modern law books but new combinations and arrangements of old materials, in which the skill and judgment of the author in the selection and exposition and accurate use of those materials constitute the bases of his reputation as well as of his copyright? Blackstone's Commentaries and Kent's Commentaries are but splendid examples of the merit of such achievements. In truth, every author of a book has a copyright in the plan, arrangement, and combination of his materials, and in his mode of illustrating the subНе ject, if it be new and original in its substances. who constructs, by a new plan and arrangement and com bination of old materials, a book designed for instruction, either of the young or of the old, has a title of copyright which cannot be displaced by showing that some part of the plan or arrange ment or combination had been used before. The true test of what is or is not piracy is to ascertain whether the plan, arrangement, and illustration of the original work have been

used as the model of the new book, with colorable alterations and variations only to disguise the use thereof; or whether the new work is the result of the writer's own labor, skill, and use of common materials and common sources of knowledge open to all men, the resemblances being either accidental or arising from the nature of the subject."

The space we have devoted to literary property does not permit us to enter at length on property in inventions. subject is too important, however, to be altogether omitted. Whilst industry was despised as in Greece and Rome, whilst manual labor was regarded with aversion and prejudice, as degrading to man and unworthy of a citizen, we could not expect inventions to be rewarded. It was not till labor became emancipated, and industry was recognized as an element in the promotion of wealth, that the right of inventors to recognition and reward was admitted. England was the first in providing for it, though the statute of James in 1623 was only a protest against the abuse of monopolies. The United States came next, in 1787, by recognizing the right of inventors expressly in their Constitution; and immediately after came France, in 1791, when the Constituent Assembly passed a law upon the subject, the preamble of which was, "The National Assembly, considering that every new idea, the manifestation or development of which may be useful to society, belongs primarily to him who conceived it, and that it would be attacking the rights of man in their essence not to regard an industrial discovery as the property of its author." We shall not revert to the interesting question of the natural right of inventors. The patent law, still more than the law of copyright, has been the subject of keen controversy. It is objected to patents that they afford a very unsatisfactory stimulus to invention, the advantage reaped by inventors being obtained at a frightful cost to the country; that whilst the best stimulus to invention is natural competition, patent laws destroy that competition; that it is no part of the state to stimulate or reward invention, the true function of the state being to protect, not to direct, the increase of human energy; that patent laws have become a cause of embarrassment and an obstruction to progress; that they produce a similar influence as a lottery; and that many most meritorious in