Page:Copyright, Its History And Its Law (1912).djvu/39

 established, enabled authors to use the same means of redress, so far as they held good, which persons suffering wrongs as to other property had, the law was so drawn that in 1774 the English House of Lords (against, however, the weight of one half of English judicial opinion) decided that, instead of giv-ing additional sanction to a formerly existing right, the statute of Anne had substituted a new and lesser right to the exclusion of what the majority of Eng-lish judges held to have been an old and greater right. Literary and like property to this extent lost the character of copy-right, and became the subject of copy-privilege, depending on legal enactment for the security of the private owner. American courts, wont to follow English precedent, have rather taken for granted this view of the law of literary property, and our Constitution, in authorizing Congress to secure "for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries," was evidently drawn from the same point of view, though it does not in itself deny or withdraw the natural rights of the author at common law.