entre les habitants. Pour que la commune soit responsable, il faut : 1o. qu'il y ait préjudice causé soit aux personnes soit aux propriétés publiques ou privées; 2°. que ce dommage ait été causé par des attroupements; 3°. que le délit ait été commis à force ouverte ou par violence. La loi municipale supprime l'amende qui devait être infligée au profit de l'Etat, et laisse aux tribunaux le soin d'arbitrer les dommages-intérêts conformément au droit commun. La commune doit être déchargée de toute responsabilité, 1o. lorsqu'elle peut prouver que toutes les mesures qui étaient en son pouvoir ont été prises à l'effet de prévenir les attroupements et d'en faire connaître les auteurs; 2°. lorsque les dommages causés sont le résultat d'un fait de guerre ; 3°. dans les communes où la municipalité n'a pas la disposition de la police locale ni de la force armée. Cette dernière exception comprend la ville de Paris, celle de Lyon et les villes qui sont placées sous le régime de l'état de siège.

ALBERT GIGOT,

Ancien Préfet de Police.

[It will be observed that the special enactments referred to were all passed by constitutional, and the most important of them by republican legislatures.-EDITOR.]

IV. SWITZERLAND.

THE right of public meeting [so far as implied in that of forming lawful associations] is guaranteed by the federal constitutions of 1848 and 1874 (art. 56). The former constitutions of 1815 contained no such guarantee, nor that of 1803 called Mediation, or the Helvetic constitution of 1798. This right of public meeting is guaranteed to Swiss citizens only, and to foreigners belonging to states which have concluded treaties of reciprocal rights of settlement, who are accordingly admitted to reside in any of the Swiss cantons on the same footing, and on the same conditions as citizens of the other Swiss cantons. British subjects are therefore entitled to have public meetings and to form associations if they are resident in Switzerland, but foreigners domiciled abroad have not the right to hold public meetings in Switzerland. The government of Zürich was therefore within its right in forbidding an international congress of Socialists.

The right of public meeting is however not so absolutely guaranteed by the federal constitution as other individual rights are; for instance, the freedom of the press1, but dependent on political reasons, and the scope and means of the meetings. The execution of Article 56 of the federal constitution is reserved to the cantons, but the federal tribunal can, when the case arises, decide on appeal whether the principle of the constitution is violated or not. Suppose the cantonal government interdicts a meeting for its dangerous character, then the federal tribunal has on appeal to examine the merits of the case, and to decide accordingly. In the case of the international meeting of Socialists at Zürich, the tribunal confirmed the prohibition issued by the government of Zürich. On the whole, the governments are very liberal, and the cases of interdiction very scarce, but the right of interdiction of meetings having a dangerous or seditious character cannot be contested, and is used if necessary.

Resistance to public officers is not dealt with by the federal constitution, but is left to the cantonal legislation or cantonal constitutions. The constitution of the canton of Bern justifies resistance against the unlawful entering of a house by an official or a policeman. Complaints of this kind are very rare in Switzerland. On the other hand, the public assembling of people with the intention of resisting public authorities by force, or of forcing them to revoke any measure, or of taking revenge on public authorities for measures executed by them, is treated as riot by the federal penal code. If the riot ceases after the formal summons which answers to the socalled reading of the Riot Act in England, the instigators are nevertheless punishable with two years' imprisonment with hard labour; and if the authorities are obliged to restore order by force, then the participants are punishable with from two years' imprisonment with hard labour to ten years' penal servitude, if loss of life or injury to person or property has taken place. In case of less serious harm having been done the penalties are milder (Code Pénal of 1853, art. 46). The cantonal penal codes deal in the same way and almost in the same words with resistance to any public authority in the exercise of its duties or functions, and violence offered to public officers.

On the whole, resistance to public authority and public officers is subjected to various penalties by both federal and cantonal laws. Although executive government is not so strong in Switzerland as in the monarchical states of the Continent, resistance to the

1 'Die Pressfreiheit ist gewährleistet,' art. 55. The language of art. 56 is 'Die Bürger haben das Recht, Vereine zu bilden, sofern,' &c.

execution of the law, and to public officers in the exercise of their office, is not favoured by public opinion, and is not of common

occurrence.

K. G. KÖNIG.

[We are compelled by want of space to omit the extracts from cantonal constitutions-those of Ticino, Luzern, Solothurn, Bern, Aargau, and Zürich-which were added in Dr. König's MS.]

We have received, just before going to press, an article on the law of the United States-in other words, the received American interpretation and application of the Common Law-by Mr. Edmund H. Bennett, Dean of the Law School of Boston University. This will appear in our July number. Meanwhile we extract a few sentences. A public meeting becomes unlawful so soon as from general appearances and all the surrounding circumstances it naturally excites terror, alarm, and consternation in the minds of peaceable and law-abiding citizens; so soon as in the minds of rational and firm-minded men it is likely to endanger the peace and tranquillity of the neighbourhood. . . When that condition of things exists, that moment the peace officer may intervene and disperse the assembly. Whether that state of things does or does not exist must be finally passed upon by a jury of the country in prosecutions arising out of such interference. No abstract rule can be laid down beforehand, but it is safe to say that in America the inclination of juries as a rule is to support law and order, and to protect the officer in the bona fide discharge of his apparent duty on such critical occasions.'-EDITOR.

172

CURIOSITIES OF COPYRIGHT LAW.

EFORMITY, if sufficiently choice, is to the Oriental eye as admirable as beauty and symmetry. The Western mind, while waiting patiently for a finer model, may perhaps occupy itself in that admiration which is not approval,-admiration of some features of the Law of Copyright-Literary, Dramatic, Artistic, and Musical.

It should be premised that in this article the term Copyright means only those rights which are the creation of Statute, as opposed to those which exist at Common Law. No fewer than fifteen statutes have dealt with the topic, many of them remarkable for the variety of their effects and for the difficulty and impurity of their style.

A Royal Commission which reported in 1878 on the whole subject did justice to the bad grammar, to be found in 5 & 6 Vic. c. 45, § 18,—to the first section of 54 G. iii. c. 56, which is styled 'a miracle of intricacy and verbosity, in which an 'of' appears which 'may be a misprint,' and the first half of the section is repeated in the second half with every circumstance of difficulty,—and to the carefulness with which the Statute 17 G. iii. c. 57, one sentence of fifty-five lines, was passed to qualify a sentence of sixty-one lines, i. e. 8 G. ii. c. 13, § 1 in two small particulars.

The Commission reported recommending Codification, with certain amendments in the substantive law. As a result one small amending Statute was passed four years afterwards (45 & 46 Vic. c. 40). The only thing that detracted from its efficiency was that by ill luck no sanction had been provided for disobedience.

At Common Law a man has before 'publication' a right of property in his own productions, literary or artistic, in virtue of which he can restrain any person from copying them (Prince Albert v. Strange, 1 Mac. & Gor. 25; Duke of Queensberry v. Shebbeare, 2 Eden 329). What constitutes 'publication' is hard to say, and probably each class of case should be judged on its own merits, but it seems that for publication in the vulgar sense to be publication in the legal sense it must not be clogged with conditions or trusts, express or implied (Mayall v. Higbey, 1 H. & C. 48; Abernethy v. Hutchinson, I Hall & Twell. 28; Caird v. Sime, 12 Ap. Ca. 326).

The effect of publication' on the Common Law right of property has been the occasion of learned difference (Millar v. Taylor, 4 Burr. 2303; Donaldson v. Beckett, 4 Burr. 2408; Jeffreys v. Boosey, 4 H. L. C. 815). But the victorious opinion seems to be that after

publication the only rights existing are those conferred by Statute, that is to say, Copyright, the exclusive right to multiply copies.

The present state of the Law of Copyright seems to be this. The term of copyright in Books and in printed and published Dramatic Pieces and Music under 5 & 6 Vic. c. 45, § 3 is the life of the author and seven years after his death, or forty-two years from the date of publication, whichever is the longer.

The term of copyright in Music not printed and published, but publicly performed, is (under the provisions of 3 Will. IV. c. 15, § 1, and 5 & 6 Vic. c. 45, § 20), according to the report of the Royal Commission, doubtful, and may be perhaps perpetual, while that in Lectures not printed and published, but publicly delivered, is wholly uncertain; but in Lectures printed and published it is the life of the author, or twenty-eight years from publication, whichever is the longer (5 & 6 Will. IV. c. 65).

The term for Engravings, Etchings, and Prints is twenty-eight years from publication (under 8 G. ii. c. 13; 7 G. iii. c. 38; 17 G. iii. c. 57; 6 & 7 Will. IV. c. 59; 15 & 16 Vic. c. 12, § 14); for Sculptures, fourteen years from putting forth or publishing, and another term of fourteen years if the author is alive at the end of the first term (54 G iii. c. 56).

Paintings, Drawings, and Photographs come under the provisions of 25 & 26 Vic. c. 68, which gives the author of every original painting, drawing, and photograph copyright for his life and seven years afterwards. No mention, it will be noticed, is made of publication or putting forth as the period from which copyright is to To this point further reference will be made.

run.

For establishing the fact of ownership or the date of publication, Registration provides the means, simple, cheap, and efficacious. And the Register at Stationers' Hall is no new invention, nor is it unknown to the Statutes on Copyright. But there are these differences to be noticed. To enable a person to sue for infringements of his Dramatic Copyright or Copyright in Lectures or Engravings, no Registration is needed. To enable a person to sue for infringements of his Copyright in Pooks and Paintings, Registration is needed, with this further distinction; that after Registration the owner of copyright in a book may, but the owner of copyright in a painting may not, sue for infringements committed before Registration (5 & 6 Vic. c. 45, §§ 13, 24, for Books; 25 & 26 Vic. c. 68, § 4, for Paintings).

To show the difficulty which seems to attend the interpretation of these Statutes, Vice-Chancellor Malins, in the case of Cox v. Land and Water Journal, L. R. 9 Eq. 324, decided that a newspaper was neither a periodical work' nor a sheet of letterpress' within