14 SIE DANIEL WILSON ON THE 



rights to the fruits of his labour, and of whatever exceptional gifts he may possess, is 

 still very much based ou 



"The fTood old rule, llie simple plan, 

 That he should take who lias the power, 

 And he should keep who can." 



A righteous Canadian Copyright Law will recognize the paramount claim of an author 

 to control the issue of his w^orks, and to dispose of them on his own terms, even if those 

 are not the most acceptable to the Canadian purchaser. The measure of estimation 

 extended to authors, and the general standard of literary taste, are unmistakable indices 

 of the intellectual status of a people. England could afford to laugh at Napoleon when 

 he labelled the race of whom tjhakespeare and Milton, Wordsworth and Scott, Bacon and 

 Newton, sprung as a " nation of shop-keepers ! " The " Frogs " of Aristophanes, alike by 

 its plot, as a critical review of Hellenic tragedians, and by its popular reception, furnished 

 a marvellous gauge of the intellectual stature of a community to whom such an appeal on 

 behalf of the claims of authorship could be addressed with an assurance of its acceptance. 

 Such a community realizes the debt they owe to their literary entertainers and instructors 

 as one not to be estimated at its mere money's worth. Men and women like Carlyle, 

 Tennyson, Darwin, Ruskiu, Macaulay, Freeman, Stubbs, Grreen, the Brownings, George 

 Eliot, Mrs. Oliphant, Bryce, Morris, etc., are benefactors to the world. They enormously 

 increase the sum of human happiness, as well as of intellectual, and even in some cases of 

 material, wealth. It is surely a very reasonable demand that we shall recognize their 

 right to some honest payment for their labours, even though we should have to submit to 

 a higher charge for our books. No doubt the publisher who reprints Tennyson, George 

 Macdonald, Mrs. "Ward, Mrs. Oliphant, or any other author — picking out the already popular 

 work, so as to run no risk — can afford to undersell the author's publisher. But if this is a 

 righteous proceeding it should have a wider application ; for, tried by such a standard, the 

 smuggler, or other fraudulent acquirer of materials for his craft, if he thereby furnishes a 

 cheaper article, is a public benefactor. An author expends time, labour, money, and 

 often the fruits of long years of preparatory training, in the production of his work. The 

 manufacturer does the same. In addition to his time, labour, and money, he also has 

 probably spent years in learning his trade. But the article he manufactures is a tangible 

 product. If anybody lays hands on it even international extradition laws will deal with 

 the thief. But the article manufactured by the historian, the poet, the novelist, or the 

 man of science, can be filched by the process of reprint, and neither extradition law nor 

 international code of morals takes any notice of the wrong. 



Looking to Canadian copyright legislation from the point of view that this Society 

 may be assumed to represent, there are some aspects of it that " The Trade " are least likely 

 to appreciate. There are a considerable class of writers to whom pecuniary profit is a 

 matter of very secondary consideration. As Carlyle aptly puts it : " He does not vmder- 

 take to say whether his literary labour deserves any recompense in money ; or whether 

 money in any quantity could hire him to do the like." No mere money payment would 

 have begot either the " Principia " or the " Paradise Lost," Locke's " Essay on the Human 

 Understanding," Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations," Darwin's "Descent of Man," or other 

 epoch-making books. But authors of that class attach supreme importance to the form of 

 publication ; and frequently regard the accompanying illustrations as no less indispen- 



