America and the Law of Copyright The history of Anglo-American
literary relations. which the President of Magdalen recently reviewed in the Sulgrave Manor Board lectures, presents a curious anomaly. When the writers of the last century found that their public had swollen' by a Continent but that there were no royalties for them in transatlantic demo- cracy, they exercised a just indignation, but in vain. The Copyright Act of 1891 did much to clear the air. A few American firms still batten ingloriously on dead writers whose publishers pardonably lacked the foresight to protect them, but the living suffer, not from piracy; but from the complex inconvenience of the system whereby piracy is avoided. It seems a pity that a Bill which would have permitted the United States to sub- scribe to the International Copyright Union and would have thus eased the situation was smothered by obstruc- tionist interests in the final stages of the last Congress,
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