10 SIR DANIEL WILSON ON THE 



assumed a right to traffic in the fruits of English authorship which — unless on the basis 

 of the venerable " Tables of Stone " — could not be legally called in question. The powers 

 of our Canadian Parliament, though not unlimited, are undoubtedly great enough to 

 legislate away very important rights of British authors. But it is significant to note the 

 employment of the language " pirated copies of British copyright works," employed in a 

 report of the Honourable the Privy Council of Canada, approved by His Excellency the 

 G-overnor-General in Council, on the iTth August, 1889, when referring to the legalized 

 importation of American reprints into Canada. It is quoted from the opinions given in 

 18*71, by Sir Roundell Palmer and Sir Farrer Herschell— then among the highest 

 authorities at the English bar, — relative to the legal rights of the British author through- 

 out the whole empire. " The provision in the 5th and 6th Yic, which prohibits the 

 importation into any part of the British dominions of pirated copies of British copyright 

 works, is not now in force in its integrity. The Imperial Act of the 10th and 11th Vic, 

 enables Her Majesty to suspend this prohibition in the case of any colony which should 

 pass an Act providing reasonable protection to the authors of such works. The Canadian 

 Legislature, under this provision, passed an Act (30 Vic, c 56) imposing a duty for the 

 benefit of the authors of such imported works, and the prohibition against importation 

 has accordingly been svispended, and does not now apply to Canada, but with this ex- 

 ception, the Copyright Act, 5 and 6 Vic, is still in force throughout that colony." The 

 benefit that did accrue to the author under the aforesaid provision, it may be added, 

 proved wholly illusory. 



The dealiugs of American publishers with British authors have been, from time to time, 

 redeemed from the aspect of callous indifference to all moral obligations unsustaiued by 

 statute, by honourable acts of liberality. But the history of the relations between the 

 American " book trade " and the British author since the " Declaration of Independence " 

 left the former free to do as he pleased, might, as a whole, form no unfitting sequel to 

 the well-known book entitled "A Century of Dishonour." I refer to such proceedings 

 now solely because they are made the excuse for assimilating the Canadian Copyright 

 Law to the petty instalment of some fractional item of the British author's rights extended 

 to him by recent American legislation. 



The case as it presents itself in the interests of the Canadian printer and bookseller, 

 has been thus fully set forth by Mr. Gr. Mercer Adam, whose long familiarity in earlier 

 years with one aspect of the question as a bookseller and publisher, is supplemented by 

 the later experiences of a journalist. "What," he asks, "is the Canadian position? 

 Here, if in the discussion of this vexed question, and in our attempts to legislate vipou it, 

 we have to some extent looked ' to the protection of (native) printers and publishers,' we 

 have not looked to their interests alone. Necessarily and properly we have sought to 

 foster our own industries rather than those of the ' piratical ' publishers across the line. 

 But have we not had regard to the British author Y Sir Daniel will, I hope, take me 

 seriously when I say that it has often been a difficult task to make the British author see 

 where his best interests lie. His best interests have not lain in compelling Canada to buy 

 his publisher's high-priced English editions ; still less have they lain in shutting us up 

 to the use of itnauthorized American reprints. By English enactment the American 

 reprint has for now fifty years been legally allowed to enter Canada. For quite half of 

 that time friends of the English author in Canada have striven to induce him to protect 



