Section IL, 1892. [ 3 ] Trans. Roy. Soc. Canada. 



I . — Canadian Cojjyrlght } 



By Sir Daniel Wilson, LL.D., F.R.S.E., President of the University of Toronto. 



(Read May 31st, 1892.) 



While the Royal Society of Canada is inviting the pnblicatiou in its annual volumes 

 of ' Proceedings,' of contributions designed to extend our available resources in special 

 departments of knowledge outside the range of popular literature, and thereby to facilitate 

 the interchange of philosophical speculation, and of the results of scientific discovery and 

 research, it cannot be regarded as foreign to its true functions to take into consideration 

 the facilities, and also the impediments and restrictions affecting Canadian literature. 

 In the report of the Provisional Council, which furnished the basis on which the Royal 

 Society was organized, it is provided in section 9 " That the advice and assistance of the 

 Society shall at all times be at the disposal of the Grovernment of the Dominion in all 

 matters which may be within the scope of the Society's functions." Among the subjects 

 on which the Society may with fitting propriety offer such advice, there are few, if any, 

 that can be more legitimately ranked in such a category than the legislation which aims 

 at placing on a just basis the rights of authorship and the privileges of copyright. 



The definite recognition of a proprietary right in the fruits of intellectual activity and 

 the creative powers of genius, alike in letters and in art, is one of the evidences of a 

 matured civilization. The tardy recognition of an author's right of property in the 

 productions of his pen and brain, along with the limitations and restrictions on such 

 rights, furnish materials for an interesting chapter in the history of civilization. It was 

 undoubtedly due to the absence of all recognition of an author's copyright in the reigns 

 of Queen Elizabeth and James I that the larger half of Shakespeare's dramas appeared for 

 the first time in the famous 1 623 folio, published seven years after their author's death, with 

 the irreparable lack of proof-reading and final revision. From this it has followed that 

 the text of the noblest writer in English literature is marred by numerous misreadings 

 and blundering misprints, and has furnished the subject, not only of laborious critical 

 acumen, but of embittered controversy to a long succession of commentators. 



But at the very time when England was awakening not only to an intelligent 

 appreciation of the rights of authorship, but of the interest of all in the beneficent results 

 to which such protection tends, a new element of disturbance among the English-speaking 

 race came into play. Old colonies cast off their allegiance to the mother-land, and 

 English statute laws ceased to be co-extensive with the common race and speech. Under 

 the circumstances in which separate and rival nationalities thus originated among those 

 " who speak the tongue that Shakespeare spoke," but of whom it could not always be 



' This paper was the last literary eflfort of the author, who died before he could revise the manuscript or see a 

 proof. Ed. Trans- 



