of an arrangement that should give to any
dealer the privilege of reprinting a foreign work, provided he would
contract to pay to the author or his representative 10 per cent of the
wholesale price of such work. He advised also that the American market
should be left open to the foreign edition, so that the competition
should be perfectly unrestricted.

The proposition that all dealers who would contract to pay to the
author a royalty (to be fixed by law) should be at liberty to
undertake the publication of a work was at a later date presented to
the British Commission by Mr. Farrer and Sir Henry Holland, first with
reference to home copyright, and secondly as a suggestion for an
international arrangement. In this last shape the writer had the
opportunity, in 1876, of presenting to the Commission some
considerations against it. These will be referred to further on.

A similar suggestion formed the basis of a measure submitted in 1872
by Mr. Elderkin, of New York, to the Library Committee of Congress,
and known afterwards as the Sherman Bill.

In view of the wide diversity of the plans and suggestions presented
to this Committee, there was certainly some ground for the statement
made in his report by the chairman, Senator Lot M. Morrill, of Maine,
that "there was no unanimity of opinion among those interested in the
measure." He maintained, further, that an international copyright was
not called for by reasons of general equity or of constitutional law;
that the adoption of any plan which had been proposed would be of very
doubtful advantage to American authors, and would not only be an
unquestionable and permanent injury to the interests engaged in the
manufacture of books, but a hindrance to the diffusion of knowledge
among the people, and to the cause of American education.

This report closed for the time the consideration of the subject.

The efforts in behalf of international copyright have been always more
or less hampered by the question being confused with that of a
protective tariff.

The strongest opposition to a copyright measure has as a rule come
from the protectionists. Richard Grant White said in 1868: "The
refusal of copyright in the United States to British authors is in
fact, though it is not so avowed, a part of the 'American' protective
system." And again: "With free trade we shall have just international
copyright."

It would be difficult, however, for the protectionists to show logical
gro