CHAPTER VIII 
COPYRIGHT LEGISLATION 
Tue Imperial Copyright Act, 1842, included provision in 
3. 17 that no person, except the proprietor of the copyright 
or a person authorized by him, should import into the 
United Kingdom, or any part of the British Dominions, any 
printed book first composed or printed and published in the 
United Kingdom wherein there is copyright, and reprinted 
in any country or place out of the British Dominions, on the 
penalty of the seizure of the reprint by the Customs and the 
forfeiture of a sum of £10 and double the value of each copy 
for each offence. 
In the following year the Legislature of the Province of 
Canada passed a series of resolutions urging that the English 
Copyright Act had not increased the importation of English 
literature ; that the exclusion of American reprints, even if 
possible, would be undesirable as confining the colonists to 
the study of American works, which would weaken their 
attachment to British institutions ; that reprints were often 
sold, and that the law neither could be nor would be 
enforced. Nearly all the other Legislatures of the North 
American Provinces followed suit, and in 1845 the Legislature 
of Nova Scotia memorialized the Crown for a modification of 
the Act, basing their request on the same grounds as those 
suggested by the Canadian Legislature. The representations 
of the Legislatures received sympathetic consideration from 
the Imperial Government, as will be seen from Earl Grey’s 
dispatch of November 5, 1846, and after full consideration by 
Her Majesty’s Government an Imperial Act was passed in 1847 
‘10 & 11 Vict. ¢. 95), which authorized Her Majesty to suspend 
* Parl. Pap., C. 7783, p. 17. See also Provincial Legislation, 1867-95, 
where much of the correspondence is reprinted, especially pp. 1281-1313 ; 
Juick and Garran, Constitution of Commonwealth, pp. 594 seq.