cEaP, vii] COPYRIGHT LEGISLATION 1233 
the management and regulation of its Customs. As Canada 
had done this, s. 152 could not apply to it. 
On the other hand, he held that s. 17 of the Imperial 
Copyright Act, 1842, which prohibits any person, not being 
the proprietor of the copyright or some person authorized 
by him, from importing into any part of the British dominions 
any book first composed or written or printed and published 
in any part of the United Kingdom and reprinted in any 
country or place wheresoever out of the British dominions, 
was in force in Canada. 
From Mr. Justice Street’s second judgement the petitioners 
appealed to the Court of Appeal for Ontario and the appeal 
was dismissed by a majority.r The petitioners next appealed 
to the Supreme Court of Canada, which unanimously, on 
January 31, 1905, dismissed the appeal with costs? Mr. 
Justice Sedgewick, in delivering judgement, said :— 
We are unanimously of opinion that the conclusion at 
which the majority of the Court of Appeal arrived is the cor- 
rect one and that the appeal should be dismissed with costs. 
[n so deciding, however, we wish to state that we express 
no opinion one way or the other upon the question as to 
whether Smiles v. Belford was rightly decided. 
The defendants asked the Privy Council for special leave 
to appeal, on the grounds that the decision of the Canadian 
Court that s. 152 of the Customs Consolidation Act, 1876, 
was not in force in Canada was wrong and should be reversed, 
or if that decision were correct, s. 17 of the Imperial Copyright 
dct, 1842, had been repealed by Canadian legislation. The 
Privy Council, however, declined to grant special leave to 
appeal, and it may therefore be assumed that they regarded 
the decision as substantially correct. 
It will be seen that the judgement in this case assumes that 
the Order in Council which was made under the Imperial Act 
of 1847, and under which the prohibition of the importation 
of foreign reprints into Canada was suspended so long as 
provision was made by Canadian legislation for the levying 
"80. A.R. 9. 2 Imperial Book Co. v. Black, 35S. C. R. 488.