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.