606 Literary Property. . [June, 
and he not able to prove the sale of ten. Besides, the defendant is always a 
pauper, and so the plaintiff must lose his costs of suit. ‘Therefore, the only 
remedy by the common law’is, to confine a beggar to the rules of the King’s 
Bench, or Fleet, and there he will continue the evil practice with impunity. 
We, therefore, pray, that confiscation of counterfeit copies be one of the 
penalties inflicted on offenders.” 
Penalties accordingly followed ; but the House of Lords; alarmed at 
their establishment in perpetuum, refused to grant them for any thing 
but a limited term. The act being made to speak of vesting a pro- 
perty in the author, and containing a clause professing to bestow the 
privilege of printing for a term, it seems somewhat, in language, as 
if it had been creating a right anew. Still, at the period at which it 
was passed, it was only regarded as conferring additional security : 
least of all was it supposed to have abridged the period of proprietorship 
thus tacitly assumed to have existed at the common law. “ It certainly,” 
says a high authority, “‘ went to the committee as a bill to secure the un- 
doubted property of copies for ever. It is plain objections arose in the 
committee to the generality of the proposition, which ended in securing 
the property of copies for a term, without prejudice to either side of the 
question upon the general proposition as to the right.” * 
By the year 1760, a suspicion having notwithstanding got abroad that, 
in opposition to the popular apprehension, the law, in reality, only recog- 
nized the existence of copyright for the restricted period*,mentioned in 
the statute of Anné, the booksellers became anxious to obtain a decision 
of the question, and a fictitious action was instituted for the purpose. 
The case was very elaborately argued before the judges, but the collusive 
character of the proceedings having come to their ears, they refused to 
proceed, though not it appears until after they had arrived at an unani- 
‘mous opinion in favour. of the continuance of the perpetuity. A piracy 
perpetrated on Thomson’s Seasons, after the period specified in the 
statute had expired, about seven years afterwards, again, however, 
brought the question before the court in the celebrated case of Millar 
and Taylor ; in which the two propositions set up for the defence were :— 
1st.,. That the common law had never, in point of fact, given any 
property in literary composition ; and 
Qdly., That if it had, the statute had abridged the term. 
The arguments in support of the first, were the finest specimens of legal 
puling it has ever been our luck to meet with. -It was urged that mental 
productions could not fall within the legal definitions of property—that 
there could be no property in ideas—that thought was common stock— 
accordingly there could be no appropriation of the thinking faculty— 
and that the very act of publication was a dedication—a gratuitous 
present to the public. The second proposition was principally main- 
tained on the construction of the statute. The defendant found a 
staunch supporter in Mr. Justice Yates, but the other three judges of the 
court, with Lord Mansfield in their number, as stoutly opposed him, and 
Judge Yates being outvoted, a judgment was given establishing the 
perpetuity of copyright. 
But the matter was not fated to rest here. The principle of the de- 
cision hecame afterwards the subject of appeal to the Lords in the case 
* Mr. Justice Willes in the case of Millar.and Taylor. 
