CANADIAN COPYRIGHT. 18 



" A ]icense shall be granted to any applicant agreeing to pay the author or his legal 

 representatives a royalty often per centum on the retail price of each copy or reproduction 

 issued of the work which is the subject of the license and giving security for such pay- 

 ment to the satisfaction of the Minister. 



"The royalty provided for in the next preceding section shall be collected by the 

 officers of the Department of Inland Revenue, and paid over to the persons entitled thereto, 

 under regulations approved by the Governor in Council ; but the Gi-overnment shall not 

 be liable to account for any such royalty not actually collected." 



This is a repetition of the old illusory promise of a royalty utterly beyond the author's 

 reach. He cannot possibly ascertain how many copies of his book are printed and sold ; 

 and he would fiad on application to the Customs, as has long since been abundantly 

 demonstrated, that be might as well seek to recover the last winter's snows ! In spite of 

 all the saving clauses, including this promise of a royalty, which the Groverument are 

 neither to be expected to account for or collect, the author is really classed apart as a 

 pariah, outside of the ordinary rights of property iu his own products. If any other class 

 of manufacturers — and surely an author's manuscript is a very special class of skilled 

 manufacture — were so dealt with by the legislature, it would be denounced as a 

 monstrous wrong. One month is allowed him to register his legal property, and if he 

 neglect to do so, it is free to any one to appropriate it for his own profit, it having thereby 

 passed entirely beyond his control. 



The statute embodying those provisions passed through the various stages in the 

 two Houses of the Canadian Parliament, in May, 1889 , but, as an Act especially affecting- 

 British interests, was reserved by the Grovernor-General for the consideration of Her 

 Majesty. The Royal assent to the Act has thus far been withheld, and it maybe assumed 

 that it will be again brought under the consideration of the Canadian Parliament. With 

 this prospect in view, it appears to be specially incumbent on the members of the Royal 

 Society of Canada, as representatives of important interests involved, carefully to review 

 the measure in all its aspects, and endeavour to obtniu the enactment of a measure, 

 creditable to the Driminion, and just to the author, while giving all reasonable considera- 

 tion to the claims of other parties interested in the results of such legislation. 



But it is obvious that popular opinion requires to be enlightened on some moral 

 aspects of the question. Viewed from the narrow stand-point of mere self interest, there is 

 no doubt that the Canadian Parliament by legislating away the rights of the British 

 author, or placing him under restrictions and limitations analogous to the grudging con- 

 cessions of the recent American Copyright Law, may secure to Canadians the acquisition 

 of a certain class of popular literature at a cheaper rate, while this course of action is 

 defended on the plea that whether we do so or not, our American neighbours certainly 

 will. In the letter addressed by the Canadian Government to the Secretary of the 

 Colonies in defence of the terms of the new Copyright Act it is stated that : 



" Parliament considered that the peculiar position in which Canada is placed on 

 account of her proximity to the United States, and the copyright policy of the United 

 States, demand peculiar treatment in legislation on the subject, and treatment different 

 from both the Berne Convention and from the Imperial and Canadian Copyright Act 

 heretofore in force." 



American legislation, even iu its recent first recognition that an author has any moral 



