16 SIE DANIEL WILSON ON THE 



because it was profitable to the publisher to use his old stereotyped plates. In all pro- 

 gressive sciences ; in anthropology, archaeology, geology, and biology ; in the science of 

 language, in history and philosophy ; in theological and historical criticism, no author 

 would willingly see his book stereotyped. He welcomes the invitation which a new 

 edition offers, as an opportunity for revision, and the modification or expansion of earlier 

 conclusions. 



To the publisher, on the contrary, every motive of interest and ready profit is in 

 favour of stereotyping. He not only lays his plates aside, and prints additional copies 

 from time to time, to meet the current demand, but he can take advantage of the fresh 

 impetus given by the favourable reception of an author's new and revised edition, to 

 reissue the old one, with all its shortcomings and blunders. Such cases have beeu by no 

 means rare. The Harpers of New York, stereotyped the earlier editions of Sir Charles 

 Lyell's works, and continued to suppljj^ them to the American reader until the fraud 

 culminated in a professor of natural theolosry producing the long abandoned views of the 

 author of " The Antiquity of Man," in confutation ofopinions of which he was the avowed 

 champion. Only those who have suffered can fully realize the intense disgust with 

 which an author sees his early, crude opinions, his errors, and imperfections, perpetuated 

 in a new edition over which he has no control, and which he would gladly have revised 

 on almost any terms. 



4. Further, an author should have a right to prevent the addition of any preface, 

 supplement or appendix, unauthorized by him ; and still more, to preclude all tampering 

 with his text. This has beeu a frequent ground of complaint by English authors. The 

 late Dr. Robert Chambers, for example, protested indignantly against eucyclopœdia 

 articles reproduced with his name attached to them, while they had undergone material 

 alterations to adapt them to American popular opinion The more recent tamperings 

 with the text of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a woik brought out at great cost by its 

 English publishers, and reproduced in the United States in open contempt of all 

 moral obligations as to proprietary rights, either of authors or publishers, has beeu scan- 

 dalous. 



The conditions imposed by the Canadian " Copyright Act," which abrogate an 

 author's right in his own property, within one month from its issue from the English 

 press, are glaringly unjust. If they are reasonable, why not apply them to all pro2')erty ? 

 The author, or his publisher having duly registered his work, where it had been produced 

 and published, is known and accessible to all, as the rightful owner or disposer of the 

 copyright. It is no unreasonable requirement that his rights shall remain in perpetuity, 

 and any Canadian printer or publisher desiring to issue a reprint, or in any other way to 

 co-operate in the publication and sale of his work, shall be required to negotiate with 

 him or his agent in precisely the same way as is now required to transact business with 

 the manufacturer of any other marketable goods. 



" Even in England," one of the defenders of the Canadian Copyright Act remarks, 

 " neither literary copyright nor patent right is held to be absolute and perpetual. Without 

 protection by the common law literary industry would, of course, have no stimulus ; but 

 in no country is the work of an author, when given to the public, an indefeasible and 

 inalienable property. So treated, there is a broad distinction for the general good as it is 

 held, between literary property and property of other kinds. That the public, after a 



