tedness of those who,
centuries ago, provided by this means for the perpetuity of literature.

The earliest step taken in this direction appears to have been in France.
By an ordinance proclaimed in 1537, regulating the printing of books, it
was required that a copy of each work issued from the press should be
deposited in the royal library. And it was distinctly affirmed that the
ground of this exaction was to preserve to posterity the literature of
the time, which might otherwise disappear.[2] This edict of three
centuries and a half ago was the seed-grain from which has grown the
largest library yet gathered in the world--the _Bibliotheque Nationale_
of France. It antedated by more than two hundred years, any similar
provision in England for the preservation of the national literature.

It is a notable fact that the United States of America was the first
nation that ever embodied the principle of protection to the rights of
authors in its fundamental law. "The Congress shall have power to promote
the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to
authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings
and discoveries." Thus anchored in the Constitution itself, this
principle has been further recognized by repeated acts of Congress, aimed
in all cases at giving it full practical effect.

If it is asked why the authors of the Constitution gave to Congress no
plenary power, which might have authorized a grant of copyright in
perpetuity, the answer is, that in this, British precedent had a great,
if not a controlling influence. Copyright in England, by virtue of the
statute of Anne, passed in 1710 (the first British copyright act), was
limited to fourteen years, with right of renewal, by a living author, of
only fourteen years more; and this was in full force in 1787, when our
Constitution was framed. Prior to the British statute of 1710, authors
had only what is called a common law right to their writings; and however
good such a right might be, so long as they held them in manuscript, the
protection to printed books was extremely uncertain and precarious.

It has been held, indeed, that all copyright laws, so far from
maintaining an exclusive property right to authors, do in effect deny it
(at least in the sense of a natural right), by explicitly limiting the
term of exclusive ownership, which might otherwise be held (as in other
property) to be perpetual. But there is a radical