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," nor can I submit to remain a member
of the Board of Trade without recording my warm dissent from the action of
the Council and the Executive. I object emphatically to our taking the law
into our own hands, and fixing what we may be pleased to think is _a
reasonable price_ to be paid authors for their property, merely because it
is the product of their intellectual labours. I am satisfied to accept
the Canadian law as it is, and to abide by its provisions if they are
fairly construed.