International Copyright | Page 7

public, and the best work is now fairly secure of a hearing. But there is no question but what the want of a copyright measure has, as above explained, operated during the past three quarters of a century to retard and discourage the growth of American literature, especially of American fiction, and to prevent American authors from receiving a fair return for their labor. An international copyright is the first step towards that long-waited-for "great American novel."
In 1876 a Commission was appointed by the Government of Great Britain "to make inquiry in regard to the laws and regulations relating to home, colonial, and international copyright." The Commission was made fairly representative of the different interests to be considered, comprising among authors: Earl Stanhope, Louis Mallet, Fitzjames Stephen, Edward Jenkins, William Smith, Sir Henry Holland, James Anthony Froude, and Anthony Trollope, and also Sir Julius Benedict for the composers, Sir Charles Young for the dramatists, Sir John Rose and Mr. Farrer for colonial interests, and Mr. F. R. Daldy for the publishers; and it has done its work in the thorough, painstaking way which is characteristic of the methods of British legislation.
It has collected during the past two years a vast mass of testimony from various sources, and after full consideration has arrived at a series of recommendations which it has presented to Parliament, and which will in all probability be adopted.
It is recommended that the copyright on books, instead of holding for forty-two years from date of registration, shall endure for the lifetime of the author and for thirty years thereafter. This is the arrangement at present existing in Germany, and it has the important advantage that under it all the copyrights of an author will expire at the same date.
The Commission further recommends (and this is the recommendation most important for our subject) that the right of copyright throughout the British dominions be extended to any author, wherever resident and of whatever nationality, whose work may first be published within the British Empire.
With reference to the present relations of British authors with this country, it uses the following words: "It has been suggested to us that this country would be justified in taking steps of a retaliatory character, with a view of enforcing, incidentally, that protection from the United States which we accord to them. This might be done by withdrawing from the Americans the privilege of copyright on first publication in this country. We have, however, come to the conclusion that, on the highest public grounds of policy and expediency, it is advisable that our law should be based on correct principles, irrespectively of the opinions or the policy of other nations. We admit the propriety of protecting copyright, and it appears to us that the principle of copyright, if admitted, is of universal application. We therefore recommend that this country should pursue the policy of recognizing the author's rights, irrespective of nationality."
Here is a claim for a far-seeing, statesmanlike policy, based upon principles of wide equity, and planned for the permanent advantage of literature in England and throughout the world. Contrast with this the narrow and local views of the following resolutions adopted at a meeting held in Philadelphia in January, 1872, with reference to international copyright, at which, if I remember rightly, Mr. Henry Carey Baird presided;
"I. That thought, unless expressed, is the property of the thinker" (a pretty safe proposition, as, until expressed, it could hardly incur any serious risk of being appropriated); "when given to the world, it is as light, free to all.
"II. As property it can only demand the protection of the municipal law of the country to which the thinker is subject."
The property which would, if it still existed, most nearly approximate to such a definition as this is that in slaves. Twenty years ago, an African chattel who was worth $1000 in Charleston became, on slipping across to the Bermudas, as a piece of property valueless. He had no longer a market price.
It is this ephemeral kind of ownership, limited by accidental political boundaries, that our Philadelphia friends are willing to concede to the work of a man's mind, the productions into which have been absorbed the grey matter of his brain and perhaps the best part of his life.
"III. The author of any country, by becoming a citizen of this, and assuming and performing the duties thereof, can have the same protection that an American author has."
We have already shown what an exceedingly unprotective and unremunerative arrangement it is that is accorded to the American author, and we have yet to find a single one, except perhaps Mr. Carey, who is satisfied with it.
Why a European author, who has before him, under international conventions, the markets of his native country and of all the world, excepting belated America, should