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ed to with great precaution, and in a most limited extent. As long as fever cases can be diluted through a large ward, with proper attention to ventilation, scarcely any danger of contagion may arise; but in a period of epidemic, such as existed in the late and present year, when all the hospitals x were crowded with patients assailed by the prevailing disease of fever, great hazard must be run, and the experience of this year has demonstrated the danger and evil of the system. As the great preservative against conta gion is a free circulation of air, patients labouring under chronic disorders cannot with propriety be subjected to the same treatment; and a system of medical policy, which is essential in one case to prevent the spreading of the disease, becomes highly prejudicial in the other. Besides, a great prejudice prevails; and your Committee cannot consider it as unfounded, among the poorer classes of society, who are the main objects of these establishments, against either entering themselves, or sending their relations into these hos pitals, on account of the hazard of infection to which they are exposed; the events of the last year are certainly not calculated to weaken these opinions. And your Committee feel assured, that to diminish the number of fever cases in every hospital, by increasing the powers of receiving them in institutions exclusively set apart for that disease, would not only do away the impression on the public mind above alluded to, but contribute most materially to the relief and good arrangements of those hospitals, the wards of which are now exposed to be indiscriminately filled with patients labouring under diseases in all their different stages of suffering and malig. nity.

Your Committee refrain from entering more into detail on these subjects; they refer generally to the evi.

dence, which to their minds is conclusive. That evidence has demonstrated the extent of the epidemic, the probable chance of its continuance, as well as of its occasional recurrence, the small means afforded by the hospital to receive patients assailed by it, the great hazard of mixing them with those who labour under diseases of a diffe rent nature, the utility of the fever institution, both for the cure of the disorder, and for arresting the progress of contagion; all these facts, so made out, have satisfied your Committee, that it would be highly expedient to extend the public aid to this establishment. And as they see no reason why the capital stock of the hospital should not be augmented, they should propose a further grant of 2000l., which, with the 1000l. already made, will enable the institution to increase its means of accommodation to 100 patients. Taking a fair average of the fever cases in the metropolis, this establishment will thus be enabled to receive a great proportion of the patients who are now sent to other hospitals; and probably, in ordinary times, nearly the whole of the fevers of the metropolis.

Your Committee feel assured, that in case the fever should continue its ravages undiminished, and the same burden which lay so heavy on the finances of this institution in the last year, should exist during the present, Parliament would consent to provide some additional support; but, at present, they consider the sum abovementioned as sufficient, and they rely with confidence on the munificence and charity of the public to promote the ordinary annual funds for the support of an institution so well deserving the countenance of all ranks of society. Your Committee have fully satisfied themselves, that the most beneficial effects have resulted from hospitals exclusively set apart for cases of fever. They refer generally to the accounts.

to shew the small income of this admirable institution, as well as the increasing demands on it; and though the benevolence of the public has done much to raise the establishment to its useful pre-eminence, yet farther aid is still wanted; and your Committee wish to recommend his Majesty's Govern ment to reconsider the grant they have already made.

Your Committee, in recommending this grant of money, are aware of the general impolicy of supporting public hospitals by advances of public money; but the peculiar state of this establish ment, its nature and character, the pressure of its funds, which require immediate and large additions to them; and, above all, the diseased state of the metropolis in respect of fever, and the probability of its malignity being increased towards the autumn; all these reasons satisfy your Committee, that a departure from the general principle may in this case be adopted.

From the experience derived from the establishments at Chester, Manchester, and Waterford, according to a report which has been laid before them, it appears that not only no hazard of spreading infection has been incurred, but, in point of fact, the number of contagious diseases has been greatly diminished, not only in towns, but in the very district and neighbour hood where houses of recovery have been situated. Dr Roget, late physician to the Manchester Infirmary, informed your Committee, that at Manchester no medical officer or attendant in the hospital has been afflicted with the fever generated within its walls; and that in the town itself the number of cases of that disease has diminished to a less degree than the or dinary average prior to the establishment of this institution. Dr Holme, physician to the infirmary, from its establishment to the present period, confirms this statement to its full extent.

Your Committee cannot close this report without expressing a regret that any hospital in the metropolis should not possess a register of diseases; they trust this omission will speedily be rectified. And, in their opinion, it would be adviseable to register, not only the diseases, but also the name and profession of the patient. It must at all times be a matter of useful knowledge to be able to learn the quality and extent of the different diseases that prevail at different periods; and your Committee have felt the want of that information, arising out of this strange irregularity, in not being able to ascertain the ave rage fever cases that have occurred for some years past in the metropolis.

REPORT

Of the Select Committee on the Copyright Acts, with abridged Minutes of Evidence.

The earliest foundation for a claim from any public library, to the gratu itous delivery of new publications, is to be found in a deed of the year 1610, by which the Company of Stationers of London, at the request of Sir Thomas Bodley, engages to deliver a copy of every book printed in the company (and not having been before printed,) to the University of Oxford. This, however, seems to be confined to the publications of the Company in its corporate capacity, and could in no case extend to those which might proceed from individuals unconnected with it.

Soon after the Restoration in the year 1662, was passed, the "Act for preventing abuses in printing seditious, treasonable, and unlicensed books and pamphlets, and for regulating of printing and printing presses;" by which, for the first time, it was enacted, That every printer should reserve three copies of the best and largest paper of every book new printed, or reprinted

by him with additions, and shall, before any public vending of the said book, bring them to the master of the Company of Stationers, and deliver them to him; one whereof shall be delivered to the keeper of his Majesty's library, and the other two to be sent to the vice-chancellor of the two universities respectively, to the use of the public libraries of the said universities. This act was originally introduced for two years, but was continued by two acts of the same parliament till 1679, when it expired.* It was, however, revived in the first year of James the Second, and finally expired in 1695.

It has been stated by Mr Gaisford, one of the curators of the Bodleian Library," that there are several books entered in its register, as sent from the Stationers' Company subsequent to the expiration of that act ;" but it is probable that this delivery was by no means general, as there are no traces of it at Stationers' Hall, and as Hearne, in the preface to the "Reliquæ Bodleianæ," printed in 1703, presses for benefactions to that library as peculiarly desirable," since the act of parliament for sending copies of books, printed by the London booksellers, is expired, and there are divers wanting for several years past."

During this period, the claim of authors and publishers to the perpetual copyright of their publications, rested upon what was afterwards determined to have been the common law, by a majority of nine to three of the judges, on the cases of Millar and Taylor in 1769, and Donaldson and Becket in 1774. Large estates had been vested

in copyrights; these copyrights had been assigned from hand to hand, had been the subject of family settlements,t and in some instances larger prices had been given for the purchase of them, (relation being had to the comparative value of money,) than at any time subsequent to the act of the 8th of Queen Anne. By this act, which, in the last of these two cases, has since been determined to have destroyed the former perpetual copyright, and to have substituted one for a more limited period, but protected by additional penalties on those who should infringe it, it is directed, that nine copies of each book that shall be printed or published, or reprinted and published with additions, shall, by the printer, be delivered to the warehouse-keeper of the Company of Stationers, before such publication made, for the use of the Royal Library, the libraries of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the libraries of the four Universities of Scotland, the library of Sion College in London, and the library belonging to the Faculty of Advocates at Edin burgh.

From the passing of this act until the decision of the cases of Beckford and Hood in 1798, and of the University of Cambridge and Bryer in 1813, it was universally understood, that neither the protection of copyright, nor the obligation to deliver the eleven copies attached to the publication of any book, unless it was registered at Stationers' Hall, an act which was considered as purely optional and unnecessary, where it was intended to abandon the claim for copyright; and, in con

Upon reference to the continuing act of 17 Ch. 2d. c. 4, the clauses respecting the delivering of the three copies appear to be perpetual, yet it should seem that they were not so considered, not being adverted to in the Act of Anne.

Birch, in his Life of Archbishop Tillotson, states, that his widow, after his death

in 1695, sold the copyright of his unpublished sermons for 2,500 guineas.

The whole number of entries during the 70 years, from 1710 to 1780, does not equal that which has taken place in the last four years. See Appendix, No. I.

formity to this construction, the act of 41 Geo. 3d, expressly entitled the libraries of Trinity College, and the King's Inn, Dublin, to copies of such books only as should be entered at Stationers' Hall.

In Beckfort v. Hood, the Court of King's Bench decided, that the omission of the entry only prevented a prosecution for the penalties inflicted by the statutes, but it did not in any degree impede the recovery of a satisfaction for the violation of the copyright. The same Court further determined, in the case of the University of Cambridge against Bryer, in 1812, that the eleven copies were equally claimable by the public libraries, where books had not been entered at Stationers' Hall, as where they had.

The burthen of the delivery, which by the latter decision was for the first time established to be obligatory upon publishers, produced in the following year a great variety of petitions to the House of Commons for redress, which were referred to a Committee, whose Report will be found in the appendix; and in 1814 the last act on this subject was passed, which directed the indiscriminate delivery of one large paper copy of every book which should be published (at the time of its being entered at Stationers' Hall) to the British Museum, but limited the claim of the other ten libraries to such books as they should demand in writing) within twelve months after publication; and directed that a copy of the list of books entered at Stationers' Hall should be transmitted to the librarians once in three months, if not required oftener.

It appears, so far as your Committee have been enabled to procure information, that there is no other country in which a demand of this nature is carried to a similar extent. In America, Prussia, Saxony and Bavaria, one copy only is required to be

deposited; in France and Austria two, and in the Netherlands three; but in several of these countries this is not neccessary, unless copyright is intended to be claimed.

The Committee having directed a statement to be prepared by one of the witnesses, an experienced bookseller, of the retail price of one copy of every book entered at Stationers' Hall between the 30th July 1814, and the 1st of April, 1817, finds that it amounts in the whole to 1419. 3s. 11d. which will give an average of 5321. 4s. per annum ; but the price of the books received into the Cambridge University Library from July 1814 to June 1817, amounts to 1145/. 10s. the average of which is 3817. 18s. 8d. per annum.

In the course of the inquiry committed to them, the Committee have proceeded to examine a variety of evidence, which, as it is already laid before the House, they think it unnecessary here to recapitulate; but upon a full consideration of the subject, they have come to the following Resolutions :

1. "That it is the opinion of this Committee, that it is desirable that so much of the Copyright act as requires the gratuitous delivery of eleven copies should be repealed, except so far as relates to the British; Museum, and that it is desirable that a fixed allow. ance should be granted, in lieu thereof, to such of the other public libraries as may be thought expedient.

2. "That it is the opinion of this Committee, that if it should not be thought expedient by the House to comply with the above recommendation, it is desirable that the number of libraries entitled to claim such delivery should be restricted to the British Museum, and the libraries of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Dublin universities.

3. "That it is the opinion of this

Committee, that all books of prints, wherein the letter-press shall not exceed a certain very small proportion to each plate, shall be exempted from delivery, except to the Museum, with an exception of all books of mathematics.

4. "That it is the opinion of this Committee, that all books in respect of which claim to copyright shall be expressly and effectually abandoned, be also exempted.

5. "That is is the opinion of this Committee, that the obligation imposed on printers to retain one copy of each work printed by them, shall cease, and the copy of the Museum be made evidence in lieu of it." 5 June, 1818.

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The obligation of delivering the eleven copies had debarred them from publishing several works, particularly one by Baron Humboldt on the Nondescript Plants of America; it would have been with coloured plates, and the impression only 250 copies. There were other books in which this obligations had its weight, though it had not been the sole cause of their rejection. Among important works which had been abandoned for want of sufficent encouragement, Mr Rees mentioned the following::

Reverend Mr Boucher's Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial words.

Dr Murray's (the editor of Bruce's Travels) History of Languages.

Translations of Matthew Paris and other Latin Historians. William of Malmsbury, only published. One more has been translated, but not published.

An extensive British Biography, arranged in periods. A considerable portion of this work has been written by some of the first literary men of the present day.

The collected works of Sir Isaac Newton.

Hearne's (the Antiquary) works. Collections of the Irish Historians. Bawdwen's Translation of the Doomsday Book, after the translation was finished, and one copy and a half printed.

Mr Rees stated, that all the libraries demanded every book; except two which did not require music and novels. Those which had subscribed for books previously to the act, had discontinued their subscription, and now received them gratis. Mr Todd made a present of his edition of Johnson's Dictionary, value eleven'guineas, to Sion College, yet the same College demanded another copy under the act. Being asked if booksellers and authors had not derived great benefit from the extension of the copyright to Ireland, he answered, that they had done so, in regard to works of moderate price; but expensive works incurred no ha zard of being pirated. The only one of the above list which it could have answered to reprint in Ireland, was Coxe's Marlborough.

Among the hardships to which the delivery of the eleven copies subjected them, Mr Rees stated, that, according to printing usage, the press work was charged at an hour, or 250 copies, and if they threw off any smaller number, they were obliged to pay for the whole 250. He had printed impressions of 100 and 150, and paid for them at the

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