will be found to have arisen from a suggestion which has frequently been made by practical men, that the overseers in country parishes were continually in the habit of rummaging the old list of voters out of the parish chest, and copying that, with all its uncorrected errors, as their list of voters for the current year, instead of copying the names from the register; and it was accordingly suggested, and has indeed been acted upon in many counties with the best results, that a copy of the register should be sent to each overseer, as a guide to him to form his list from. Now it seems to us, as the most charitable solution of this otherwise inexplicable mistake, that the framers of this measure must have had some such an idea as the above in contemplation, when in place of directing the overseer to form his list verbatim from the copy of the register sent him, or even to adopt the copy of the register sent as his list for the year, by signing it, and then to have provided that the copy so signed, together with the list of claimants, (if any,) should be deemed to be "the list of voters" for the current year, they have, with the best intentions we must suppose, but with a most unpardonable ignorance of the provisions of the act of parliament they were professing to amend, enacted, that for the future the lists should consist of two independent parts, the junction of which to form a whole, is, as the law now stands, utterly impossible, and no provision made for the production before the barrister of the principal part of the list, in order that it may be revised.

We have now done with this bill. We have looked at it not with an eye of criticism, seeking to discover its faults, and to raise up difficulties where in fact none exist, but with the eye of candour, viewing it as a practical measure which it might one day be our own lot to have to put into operation; and we have but one opinion to pronounce upon its merits, which, however unpalatable it may be to its framers, we think ourselves bound to declare, that considering the importance of the objects it had in view, and also considering the talents and practical experience which it was in the power of its framers to have had recourse to, and which it appears they have neglected to avail themselves of, a more slovenly, ill-digested, inconsistent and unsatisfactory bill, was never before introduced to the notice of the legislature. The only consolation

we have is, that it is impossible it can ever be allowed to pass the House in its present form; we shall make it our duty carefully to watch its progress, and will not fail, if her Majesty's government should prove wanting in vigilance, to call the attention of her Majesty's opposition to any further attempts to palm the bill, in any thing like its present shape, upon the public, as one for the more effectual registration of parliamentary electors.

ART. VI.-THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT.

A Bill to Amend the Law relating to Copyright. THE main object of this bill is to extend the interest of an author in the copyright of his works from twenty-eight years or the duration of his life, if it exceeds that term, to a period of sixty years after his death;-apparently a considerable alteration in the law, but whether it will produce any very extensive change in literary affairs may be doubtful. Its effects will probably be confined to a few cases, but not the less important or less worthy of consideration on account of their rarity.

The general feeling of mankind must favour the author in any question which relates to the full enjoyment of the profits of his work. It is impossible to read of the destitution of Milton's family, or of a descendant of Shakespeare labouring in the field, without a sense, though not, perhaps, very accurately defined, of the world's injustice to those immortal names. The scrivener, the churchman, the politician, the merchant who drives his adventures at the risk of involving thousands in ruin, and calls his fortune prudence; all these have endowed or ennobled their posterity. We find their descendants named in the histories of nations as occupying, however tamely, the positions their active and unscrupulous fathers first achieved. But where shall we look for the descendants of the glorious Poet, of the literary Genius? We must search for the line of their descent as it steals obscurely through the dregs of society, or finds its early and more fortunate termination. That spirit which of all earthly things is

most like its Creator, being endowed with a capacity of creating in its own world of imagination, the beau ideal of the resemblances of this external world,-that spirit which opens the sources of virtuous and lofty pleasure, and sows the seeds of future thought, and the principles of noble action for millions, that spirit passes away from the world which its outpourings have raised in the scale of creation, and too often leaves its posterity in a state of poverty which forbids the education necessary even to know those very qualities of the parent to which the world bows down-this is to every mind of sense, and taste, and feeling, a thing which ought not to be. It is an unlovely truth. It may be a necessary evil in the constitution of the world, springing from some principle similar to that apparently general condition which impedes the delicacies of thought and passion in the pursuit of their proper objects, which they too rarely meet in the dark and hurried currents of this world. It may be that minds which seem to expatiate beside the world should find no meet reward in wealth and honours. But we, who are crawling on this earth, who are looking to those objects as the great stimulants of exertion, who make statesmen, lawyers, soldiers, sailors, noble as fortune makes them successful; we cannot but think the balance held unevenly, when the children of literary genius seem thrown without the pale; and whether the endeavour be successful or not, whether it be wise or not in the estimation of publishers and printers, we cannot but hold that legislator highly, who makes the endeavour to give an author a greater share than he had before in the wealth which his works produce to others, and enable him to transmit that share to his posterity.

Before the object of this bill can be properly estimated, the foundation of an author's right to any profits derived from the publication of his works should be considered. If the multiplication of copies by a printer, from the author's original manuscript, will produce profit, has the author any right, or, if any, to what extent, to share in those. profits? We should have thought this question superfluous, but for the tendency of many arguments advanced by those who oppose the measure. But notwithstanding many of their obser

vations seem based upon a secret desire that such a question might be answered with a general negative, whenever the question must be met, the existence of such a right is admitted by the most strenuous opposers of the measure. The author of a pamphlet, who opposes this measure with no inconsiderable force and ability, says,

"No doubt the publisher derives from the author his right to the manuscript," and adds, " but not to the printed book."

Certainly not to the printed book itself, but certainly to as great a portion of the value of the printed book as he makes his bargain for, when he parts with the right to the manuscript. This is an admission reluctantly obtained, under the obvious endeavour to make the admission useless. But is this admission wanted? What says the common law of England? "After a voluntary and general publication of an "author's work by himself, or by his authority, such author "has a sole and perpetual property in that publication, so as to

give him a right to confine every subsequent publication to "himself and his assigns for ever;" see Miller v. Taylor, 4 Burr. 2303. This was the opinion of three judges of the King's Bench, Mansfield being one of the three, and Mr. Justice Yates dissentient. Again, in a subsequent case. Beckett v. Donaldson, where the same question was agitated, and which came, by appeal, before the House of Lords, it was held by seven of the judges, of which Blackstone was one, against four, that "the author of any literary composi❝tion, and his assigns, had the sole right of printing and pub"lishing the same in perpetuity by the common law." But it was also holden by six of the judges against five, that such common law right was taken away by the statute, 8 Anne, by which an author was precluded from every remedy except on the foundation of that statute, and the terms and conditions prescribed thereby. Now let it be remembered that Mansfield and Blackstone, the two judges included in the majority favourable to the author, are not only two names distinguished in legal history as reflecting splendour on their profession, but men whose minds travelled beyond that profession; deeply read in the civil law on which they

based their knowledge of the law of England; men of great literary attainments, and of extensive views.

This then being the state of the case by the common law, viz. that every author possessed "the sole and perpetual property in the publication of his works," the statute 8 Anne, c. 19, limited that right to fourteen years, and if the author was living at the expiration of that time, for fourteen years longer, which was altered by the 54 Geo. III. c. 156, to twenty-eight years, and as much longer as the author should live. We say limited, for such was the construction of the House of Lords, when the question was brought before them many years after the first enactment. They determined that the statute which had been previously considered as a protection to the author, by giving him additional remedies, was really a limitation of his rights. That this differed from the previous opinion of lawyers is indisputable, for in the interval of fifty years between the passing of that statute, and the determination of the Lords in Beckett v. Donaldson, the Court of Chancery had repeatedly interfered to restrain, by injunction, the piracy of various books:-"The Whole Duty of Man," "The Miscellanies of Pope and Swift," "Nelson's Festivals and Fasts," and "The Paradise Lost," in all which the statutable copyright had long expired.

We think it may, therefore, be taken that by the laws of England before the intervention and very questionable construction of an act of parliament, the author had a perpetuity in his copyright. But one opponent has, in his pamphlet, dismissed these decisions in equity, by an observation which affords a just measure of his knowledge of the principles of equity in its forensic or judicial sense. "Equity," he says,

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means what a present Lord Chancellor thinks, or a former one has thought." He seems to be quite uninformed that Equity is a system of law or of rules founded upon wider principles than the common law, and calculated to give relief where that affords no remedy, but acting in analogy with that, and equally governed by established precedents.

The right of the author, therefore, being once established. the only question is, how far that right may be limited for a public purpose without injustice to the author, that is to say, creating to him only an inappreciable portion of injury, that