It was once the custom for the English author, when dealing with the American publisher, to throw in Canada as an inducement to complete the deal.  Mr. Thomas in his address to which I have referred stated that this is still the custom.  Mr. Thomas knows better than this, for, whilst this was undoubtedly the custom some years ago when Canada and her trade were little known or regarded in England, it is not the custom now.  Rudyard Kipling, Hall Caine, Benjamin Kidd, Crockett, Doyle, Hope, Parker, Miss Fowler, Miss Cholmondeley, Miss Montresor, Marie Corelli, all now deal with Canada as a separate market, and contract directly with Canadian publishers.  This custom is growing rapidly and more books are now directly offered to Canadian publishers than can be safely taken, having regard to the present state of the market.

Those who at present comprise a majority of the Booksellers’ Section of the Board of Trade desire to have a Canadian copyright law of their own, to secure authority which will enable the Canadian Parliament to pass an Act which would separate Canadians from the rule of British copyright legislation, and necessarily, too, from its benefits.  It goes without saying that if this is effectuated Canada will be excluded from the Copyright Union and also from protection in the vast market of the United States; and as a further consequence the works of Canadian authors would again become public property outside of Canada, and the British publisher would surely retaliate.

And what end will be gained by all this?  Nothing but the right for Canadian publishers to print in Canada the majority of British or foreign books in any cheap form they please, and to compile such works as School Readers made up of extracts culled from copyright works, subject only to such safeguards as will secure to the owners of the copyrights infringed upon a reasonable royalty, in the imposition of which they can have no effective voice.

Were the proposals of the Board of Trade carried into effect, it would reduce our country below the standard of national morality and of international fair play maintained by all other civilized nations now united in the Copyright Union.  Canadian authors would then encounter the same difficulty in securing recognition at the hands of Canadian publishers that American authors experienced with their publishers prior to 1891, when British books could be published in the United States without payment of royalty.

I agree in the view that the rights of an author are just as much entitled to protection as any other rights in property.  I am absolutely opposed to any retrograde movement on the copyright question.  I believe that the rights of publishers are inseparably bound up with those of authors, and I regard any attempt to deprive authors of any rights in the property which is the product of their intellectual exertions as “nothing short of a crime equal to that of a highwayman,”