he alternative periods named
in the Act.

[Footnote A: Author's life _plus_ seven years, or forty-two years
from date of publication, whichever term is the longer. The great
objection to the second term is that an author's books go out of
copyright at different dates, and the earlier editions go out
first.]

What the modern author alone desiderates is a big, immediate, and
protected market.

The United States of America have been a great disappointment to many
an honest British author. In the wicked old days when the States took
British books without paying for them they used to take them in large
numbers, but now that they have turned honest and passed a law
allowing the British author copyright on certain terms, they have in
great measure ceased to take; for, by the strangest of coincidences,
no sooner were British novels, histories, essays, and the like,
protected in America, than there sprang up in the States themselves,
novelists, historians, and essayists, not only numerous enough to
supply their own home markets, but talented enough to cross the
Atlantic in large numbers and challenge us in our own. Such a reward
for honesty was not contemplated.

International copyright and the Convention of Berne are things to be
proud of and rejoice over. As the first chapter in a Code of Public
European Law, they may mark the beginning of a time of settled peace,
order, and disarmament, but they have not yet enriched a single
author, though hereafter possibly an occasional novelist or
play-wright may prosper greatly under their provisions.

The copyright question is now at last really a settled question, save
in a single aspect of it. What, if anything, should be done in the
case of those authors, few in number, whose literary lives prove
longer than the period of statutory protection? Should any distinction
in law be struck between a Tennyson and a Tupper? between--But why
multiply examples? There is no need to be unnecessarily offensive.

The law and practice of to-day give the meat that remains on the bones
of the dead author after the expiration of the statutory period of
protection to the Trade. Any publisher who likes to bring out an
edition can do so, though by doing so he does not gain any exclusive
rights. A brother publisher may compete with him. As a result
the public is usually well served with cheap editions of those
non-copyright authors whose works are worth reprinting the moment the
copyright exp