— 
1829.] Literary Properiy: 607 
of Donaldson and Becket, and the whole question was once agaih ripped 
up. The appeal was mainly supported by Lord Thurlow, then attorney- 
general, and Sir J. Dalrymple, with much variety of assertion, but with 
little novelty of argument. Sir J. Dalrymple’s address was one conti- 
nued display of buffoonery ; but in his illustration of the proposition 
that publication is a dedication to the public, he quite out-heroded him- 
self. “ Besides,” says he, “there are various methods of conveying 
ideas—by looks, at which the ladies are most expert. Now an ogle is a 
lady’s own whilst in private, but if she ogles- publicly, they are every 
bedy’s property.” Convincing as might have been Sir J. Dalrymple’s 
wit to his audience, it was not quite so pointed as Falstaff’s. Be her 
eyes ever so active, no lady ever bestows her ogles gratuitously. She 
ogles only for a return, and dear enough too is often the price at which 
her ogles are purchased. With Lord Thurlow this would not have 
affected the aptitude of the illustration. So admirable a political econo- 
mist was his Lordship, “ Publication wasin his mind sale.”* The assist- 
ance of the twelve judges was called in, and of these there were eight to 
three of opinion that a perpetuity in copyright had had an existence 
previously to the existence of the statute of Anne. On the second 
question, that involving the construction of the statute, they would have 
been equally divided, had not Lord Mansfield, from the etiquette of the 
House, been prevented, as a peer, from supporting his own judgment. 
As it was, the opinions accordingly stood six to five in favour of the 
abrogation of the right by the statute. Unfortunately, Lord Camden 
took up the case very strongly against both the existence and the expe- 
dience of the right of proprietorship, and the judgment in the court 
below was ultimately reversed. 
“It is evident,” says Mr. Maugham, “ that the several Universities were 
as little prepared as any individual author or publisher, for the decision of the 
House of Lords, which overthrew the exercise of unlimited copyright, although 
it had prevailed, not only all the time antecedently to the 8th Anne, but for 
sixty-five years subsequently. The Universities hastened immediately to Par- 
liament, and in the same year, 1775, obtained an act for the two Universities 
in England, the four Universities in Scotland, and the several Colleges of 
Eton, Westminster, and Winchester, to hold in perpetuity their copyright in 
books given or bequeathed to the said Universities and Colleges, for the 
advancement of useful learning, and other purposes of education.” p. 33. 
To the Universities alone were the favours of parliament confined ; 
nor were any other steps taken to meet the consequences of this decision, 
until an act passed in the latter part of last reign at length extended the 
period of proprietorship from fourteen to twenty-eight years ; and for the 
additional contingent of fourteen then exisisting, substituted the life of the 
author, other statutes having placed the Fine Arts pretty much on the 
same footing of protection. 
Unfortunately, while contrasted with other countries, literary compo- 
sitions are, with us, thus in point of protection left so comparatively ex- 
posed, on the score of taxation, we present to foreign states a contrast 
still more invidious. “In no other country,” say the committee of 
1818, in their report, “as far as the committee have been able to procure 
information, is any demand of this kind carried to a similar extent. In 
America, Prussia, Saxony, and Bavaria, one copy only is required to be 
* Cobbett’s Parliamentary Debates, vol. 17, pp. 62, 967. 
