ne announced to
the Canadian Government as containing an understanding reached with the
Canadian publishers, and to which Mr. Daldy, on behalf of the English
publishers, consented. These statements were made in the Report of the
Section, notwithstanding the fact that at a Committee meeting composed of
its members held last year, I read a letter from the Secretary of the
British Society of Authors stating that Mr. Hall Caine's proposed Bill had
never received the approval of the Society; and although at the same
meeting I stated that Mr. Daldy had informed me he had never consented to
the Bill. After the Report of the action of the Board of Trade reached
England, Mr. Daldy addressed a letter to "The Publishers' Circular," from
which I quote:--

"So far from consenting to it (i.e., the Hall Caine Bill), I pointed
out several important errors to which I could not agree; and being
invited by some printers, publishers, and papermakers to meet them in
Toronto just afterwards, I distinctly assured them that I could not
consent to any restriction of the rights and privileges contained in
the Imperial Acts of 1842 and 1886."

I was absent from Toronto when the Booksellers' Section framed and passed
its Report, and only returned to Toronto after it had been adopted at the
meeting of the Council of the Board. Knowing that the Council was being
misled, I communicated with the President and requested that I might be
heard before the Council, offering to explain the copyright question,
which I knew was little understood by the members, of whom only two or
three are publishers. The President frankly admitted to me that he had not
investigated the question, and told me he would bring my request before
the next meeting of the Council. I was somewhat surprised to receive a
letter from the President a few days afterwards declining to allow me to
be heard, and still more surprised to read that in his annual address to
the Board, delivered four days later, he energetically pressed upon the
Board the necessity for the legislation referred to in the resolution of
the Council.

I therefore take this means of presenting the true position of literary
copyright in Canada, a subject which is but little understood, and upon
which the Executive and the Council apparently did not desire
enlightenment.

Under the British Copyright Laws, which extend to Canada, a British or
Canadian author of a literary work has the undisput