INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT

LAW.*

habit of bestowing. These considerations give additional strength to their just title to the protection of the law.

FROM an influential member we have It being established that literary projust received the REPORT presented to the perty is entitled to legal protection, it reAmerican Congress by the Committee ap-sults that this protection ought to be afpointed to consider the ADDRESS OF CERTAIN AUTHORS OF GREAT BRITAIN, on the subject of the Copyright Law, and we are happy to find that that Address has been regarded with the attention which its importance unquestionably demanded.

The Report does honour to the able men from whom it emanates, and we cannot doubt but it will prove the precursor of an act which will cement the two countries in an intellectual brotherhood equally creditable and beneficial to both. It is as follows:

"IN SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

"February 16, 1837. Read, and ordered to be printed, and that 1000 additional copies be furnished for the use of the Senate.

forded wherever the property is situated. A British merchant brings or transmits to the United States a bale of merchandise, and the moment it comes within the jurlsdiction of our laws, they throw around it effectual security. But if the work of a British Author is brought to the United States, it may be appropriated by any resident here, and republished, without any compensation whatever being made to the author. We should be all shocked if the law tolerated the least invasion of the rights of property, in the case of the merchandise, whilst those which justly belong to the works of authors are exposed to daily violation, without the possibility of their invoking the aid of the laws.

"The Committee think that this distinction in the condition of the two descriptions of property is not just; and that it ought to be remedied by some safe and cautious amendment of the law. Already

"Mr. CLAY made the following REPORT, the principle has been adopted in the pa

with Senate Bill No. 223.

"The Select Committee, to whom was referred the Address of certain British and the Petition of certain American Authors, have, according to order, had the same under consideration, and beg leave now to report:

tent laws, of extending their benefits to foreign inventions or improvements. It is but carrying out the same principle to extend the benefit of our copyright laws to foreign authors. In relation to the subjects of Great Britain and France, it will be but a measure of reciprocal justice; for, in both of those countries, our authors may enjoy that protection of their laws for literary property which is denied to their subjects here.

"That, by the act of Congress of 1831, being the law now in force regulating copyrights, the benefits of the act are re"Entertaining these views, the commitstricted to citizens or residents of the Uni-tee have been anxious to devise some ted States; so that no foreigner, residing abroad, can secure a copyright in the United States for any work of which he is the author, however important or valuable it may be. The object of the Address and Petition, therefore, is to remove this restriction as to British Authors, and to allow them to enjoy the benefits of our

law.

measure which, without too great a disturbance of interests, or affecting too seriously arrangements which have grown out of the present state of things, may, without hazard, be subjected to the test of practical experience. Of the works which have heretofore issued from the foreign press, many have been already republished in the United States; others are in a "That authors and inventors have, ac- progress of republication, and some pro cording to the practice among civilised bably have been stereotyped. A copy nations, a property in the respective pro-right law, which should embrace any of ductions of their genius, is incontestable; these works, might injuriously affect and that this property should be protected American publishers, and lead to collias effectually as any other property is, by sion and litigation between them and law, follows as a legitimate consequence. foreign authors. Authors and inventors are among the "Acting, then, on the principles of prugreatest benefactors of mankind. They dence and caution, by which the commitare often dependent, exclusively, upon tee have thought it best to be governed, their own mental labours for the means of the bill which the committee intend prosubsistence; and are frequently, from the posing, provides that the protection which nature of their pursuits, or the constitu- it secures, shall extend to those works tions of their minds, incapable of applying that provident care to worldly affairs which other classes of society are in the

Continued from p. 241.

only which shall be published after its passage. It is also limited to the subjects of Great Britain and France; among other reasons, because the committee have information that, by their laws, American authors can obtain there pro

in several of the American papers. Those who have so largely profited by the system of spoliation hitherto prevailing, have of course endeavoured to prove its propriety; some in their zeal have even gone so far as to assert, that because the thoughts that occur to one person may occur to any other person, therefore there can be no such thing as copyright as a natural right. This was, we believe, pretty nearly the position of the "Plaindealer," an ably conducted American paper; but it has begun to see its error, and has had the candour to confess it. From the No. for Feb. 25, which lies before us, we extract the following:

"What is the copyright, as the law confirms it, or we claim it? A right to ideas? I do not so understand it. Two persons attend an exploring expedition, and one describes, on his return, the events of the voyage, the countries, nations, and objects discovered; yet his companion has an indisputable right to give his own account of the same subject, and violates no law or legal privilege. Two, or fifty, historians select the life of Alexander for their subject. They may all describe the passage of the Granicus, the destruction of Tyre, the founding of Alexandria, and, in short, every action of their hero, and still there is no infringement of their respective "We have provoked such odds against domains. Two philosophers, or theolous in the contest on the subject of the right gians, or lawyers, may discuss the same of property in intellectual productions, that questions of metaphysics, or ethics, or law, we do not know but that it would be the and advance, too, the same arguments; better part of valour' to quit the field in- and there may be no violation of a copycontinently. There is one motive, how-right. What then is a copyright? A right ever, which might not be without some weight with us, to persist in the controversy, even after being convinced we had espoused the wrong side. If our doing so would continue to draw such writers into the field as we have heretofore had to con- "It is never to be mistaken. The vatend with, we should not be without excuse, riety which pervades all nature, which is as their forcible reasoning and perspicu- seen in every blade of grass, and which ous style would far more than counter-makes one star to differ from another star poise the influence of our erroneous opinions, exert what ingenuity we might to establish them.

"But we choose to deal ingenuously with our readers. We took up arms to battle for the truth, and shall lay them down the moment we find we have inadvertently engaged on the side of her adversaries. That we are shaken in the opinions we have heretofore expressed, we freely admit. The idiosyncracies of style, to use the term aptly employed in the eloquent communication annexed, are marked with such distinctness, that a bare phrase of three or four words, from a writer of admitted genius, is often so characteristic and peculiar, as to indicate its source at once, even to those who have no recollection of its origin, but who judge of it as a connoisseur does of a painting. "How far this peculiar mode of expression can be considered property, on the principles of natural justice, is the question in dispute. We are not entirely convinced that we have taken wrong ground on this subject; yet we, by no means, feel so confident of the correctness of our opinions as we did when we put them forth. One thing seems to us, and has all along seemed, very clear: if the author has a natural right of property in the products of his intellectual labour, it ought to be acknowledged as extensively as the capitalist's right of property in his money, or the merchant's in his goods. It is a common-law right, not a right by statute, maugre all decisions to the contrary," We annex the cogent article of our correspondent.

merely to the peculiar expression of ideas which the author has used; a right which nature has invested with an individuality never to be mistaken, and to which natural taste attaches an inappreciable value.

in glory, stamps every production of man with the idiosyncrasy of its author. Two painters may select for a portrait the same features, and bestow on them equal labour, under equal opportunities; and we pass the work of one without interest, to stand entranced before the canvas of the other, where 'expression pours its kindling magic.' So too there is no subject (unless possibly in geometry or mathematics) on which two writers can employ themselves, without their productions being distinguished from each other by a decided peculiarity; and it is this peculiarity alone which is the object of copyright."

*

*

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*

"I reassert then, in conclusion, that all we ask to be secured by a copyright, and all the law does secure in a copyright, is the writer's own peculiar mode of expression-meaning by this, of course, the structure of his work, the sequence of his remarks, and above all, his language and style. Leave to genius only the results of its communicable power, which defy imitation, in a painting of Raphael, or a drama of Shakspeare, or a romance of Scottleave but that, and the author asks no more.

"BIBLIOPOLE."

It is clear that what is here so justly claimed can only be secured to the author by his being reinstated in the unrestricted possession of his own work, so that he may no longer either be deprived of his just reward, or made to say or not to say what he never intended, according to the pleasure of those who may stamp hls name on a publication over which he has

no control, and in which he can have no participation.

TO A LADY.

that its annals do, in fact, record the causes of all the great struggles sustained by the nation, for whose instruction it was designed. When Charles IV. had founded this great institution, it became the central point in the countries of northern Europe, which borrowed and reflected the light already glowing over Italy. It attracted at its very origin, the notice of those great

οι Αστερας εισαθρείς, αστηρ εμος, είθε γενοίμην.κ. τ. λ. men of the fourteenth century, who were

THE stars aloof with eager gaze,
My soul's loved star! thine eye surveys-
Oh, that I were the spangled skies
To doat on thee with countless eyes!
Plato ex Laërtio

SKETCHES OF BOHEMIA, AND
THE SLAVONIAN PROVINCES
OF THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE.*

BY HENRY REEVE, ESQ.

III. THE UNIVERSITY OF PRAGUE.

THE two great edifices in the Altstadt, which now contain all that still exists of the University of Prague, were both erected in their present form by the Jesuits of the seventeenth century. The building which is still called the Carolinum, after Charles IV., the founder of the university, was the seat of that high school at a much earlier period, but the monuments and ornaments coeval with its origin, have been superseded by the architecture of its new masters, by whom it was restored in 1744. The more vast and magnificent edifice, called the Clementinum, was built for the Jesuits in 1653, by the Emperor Ferdinand III. The site upon which it stands, was previously occupied by the church of St. Clement, (whence its name is derived,) besides two other churches, a Dominican convent, and several houses, gardens, streets, and squares. This immense area is covered with halls of the richest Italian architecture, in which the libraries, cabinets, and scientific collections are deposited; and although the great Order, to whose labours this splendid habitation was dedicated, has long disappeared from the scene of its power, whilst the Carolinum is exclusively devoted to medical, legal, and scientific instruction, the higher branches of philosophical and theological learning are still taught in the Clementinum-the great seminary of Bohemia.

The University of Prague is so intimately connected with the revolutions and persecutions of the country, and the fate of Bohemia has, at all times, been so strongly influenced by the opinions originating and professed within those walls,

* Continued from p. 211.

the heralds and the fathers of art and philosophy in Europe. It grew to be the rival of the schools of Paris, Oxford, and Italy, from which it had been imitated; and within a little more than fifty years from its foundation, the dissensions of its members served to throw out those vigorous offsets, which strengthened the infant University of Cracow, and founded the first academies in Germany.

As early as 1220, Pope Honorius III. had admonished the prelates and chapters of Christendom of the necessity of establishing high public schools, in the great sees and cities of their various countries. In Italy ten universities sprang up in the fourteenth century; those of Paris and Oxford collected crowds of students from all parts of Europe. But it was not till 1348-one year after Charles IV. had ascended the throne of Bohemia

that a university was established in Prague to be the school of central Europe, and more especially of the Slavonian people; to the end, as Charles expressed it in the deed of foundation, "That his subjects should no longer be obliged to satisfy their ceaseless cravings for the fruits of knowledge, like beggars, in foreign lands.” The benefits of the institution were speedily felt in the city, which was thronged with students from all the adjacent countries. The masters and scholars were divided into four nations: the Bohemians, including the Moravians, Hungarians, and Slavonians; the_Bavarians, comprising the Austrians, Franconians, and Suabians; the Saxons, with the Danes and Swedes; and the Poles, including the Russians and Lithuanians. The University was possessed of eight endowed colleges, exactly similar to those still existing in Oxford and Cambridge. These colleges had separate fellowships for the masters in theology, and fellowships or bursaries for the poor students. The Collegium Magnum was endowed by Charles in 1366, with fellowships for twelve masters of arts, of whom one was to expound the Scriptures and another the Book of Proverbs. dowed by that admirable Queen Hedwige The Collegium Reginæ Hedvigis was enof Poland, who had already founded the Jagellonian University at Cracow, where, before these sketches are concluded, we shall retrace some monuments of her saint-like beneficence, and her early but unforgotten tomb. The College of the Apostles was endowed in 1451 for the express purpose of maintaining students,

popular party in the wars of the fifteenth century was Zizka: his undaunted courage, his iron constitution, and his lawless character, fitted him to be the chief of a band of robbers; but his religious fanaticism, and the awakened energy of his countrymen, made him the leader of a great national army, which measured its strength with the chivalry of the empire, hard by the walls of Prague, on that steep knoll which still bears his name.* The character of Zizka may be compared to that of Balfour of Burley; the men he led had the same ascetic piety, and the same grotesque pretensions to the manners of the children of Israel, which characterised the English and Scotch Puritans two centuries later. Like them, he broke the tradition of all constituted powers; and in the name of a principle of freedom long unknown, he protested with all-enduring energy, and fought, with barbarous fanaticism, against the abuses of feudal and ecclesiastical authority.

who should take upon themselves the en- The head and representative of the truly gagement of spreading to the utmost of their power those Compactata Basiliensia, by which the Council of Basle had granted the sacramental cup to the laity of the Bohemian church. The original constitution of the University had, with extraordinary liberality, granted an equal voice in its senate to each of the four nations of which it was composed; whereas in the University of Paris, the French nation had three votes, and the other nations had only one between them. The consequence of this regulation was, that the Germans and strangers outvoted the Bohemians in the university, as they already did in the corporation of the city. In 1408, John Huss, who had already distinguished himself by the bold eloquence of his preaching, and by his lessons in the schools, excited his countrymen to deprive the foreigners of this preponderance. The measure was national and popular; it was followed by a secession of no less than thirty-six thousand students (according to Eneas Sylvius) who repaired to Leipzic, Ingoldstadt, and Cracow, where they speedily formed schools of their own; and John Huss was elected Rector of the University of Prague. From that hour the Carolinum became the seat of those schismatical doctrines, which had already begun to sever Bohemia from the pale of the Catholic church; and the heresies which brought Huss and Jerome to the stake at Constance, were defended for ages in the halls and churches where they had first been taught. The scholastic dispute of the Realists and the Nominalists, and the national animosity of the Bohemians and their neighbours, envenomed the quarrel; for it is worthy of remark, that, whilst the reformers in Germany, from Occam to Luther, were violent Nominalists, Huss and the Bohemian schoolmen upheld the higher and more speculative principles of the Realists.

But although the watch word of this great revolution had been given from the chair of the University, the changes which it portended speedily assumed a political character, and were driven to their most remote consequences by political agents.*

*“Admiranda sunt quæ temptestate nostrâ inter Bohemos emersere, sive pacem, sive bellum recen

seas.

Nec meâ sentensiâ regnum ullum est, in quo ævo nostro, tot mutationes, tot bella, tot strages, tot miracula emerserint, quo Bohemia nobis ostendit." Such was the language of Pius I1., (Eneas Sylvius,) a man certainly inferior to few of those who have occupied the highest station in Christendom, and to none of his contemporaries; but who did not think it beneath his dignity to write the history of the Bohemian people, amongst whom he had had opportunities for discerning those principles of civil and religious liberty, and that energy in the defence of them, which augured great and sure changes in Europe.

During these wars of the Hussites, the University most frequently performed the appropriate part of a mediator; whilst it defended the liberties which it had obtained, it moderated and even combated the excesses of the puritanical party. Under the reign of George of Podiebrad (14581471) it supported with success the just and temperate policy of the government. But the effect of this period of disorder was fatal to the cultivation of letters; and a century later, in 1527, the acts of the University itself declare that, "the youth of these modern times, being badly brought up by bad men, are rarely found to thirst for the fountain of sacred philosophy; that all philosophers are exposed to be laughed at; and that it seems to be commonly be

* The name of Zizka is still popular in Bohemia, and the traditions of his physical strength are proverbial. There is an old oak not far from Prague, under which he is said to have slept the night before his battle with the Emperor Sigismund; and it is customary for the young blacksmiths of the city to gather a bough from this tree, which is believed to impart the sinewy virtues of the great chieftain to the men of the anvil. A portrait of Zizka exists in the convent of Strahow, and although it has been cruelly retouched, the muscular features, and the gigantic hand with which he grasps his spiked mace, probably preserve some likeness to the person of the Bohemian Sampson. Zizka was a Bohemian noble. man; his real name was John Chwal, of Trocznow and Machowitz; but in his great victory over the Teutonic Order in 1410, he lost an eye, from which he was ever after called Zizka, or the one-eyed. In the course of his wars he lost the other eye; but he continued, like King John of Bohemia, to fight, and even to conduct successful campaigns in total blindness. With a ferocity worthy of Attila, he left his skin to be made into a drum to frighten his enemies after his death; but as he died of the plague in 1424, this savage bequest was probably not attend.

ed to.