As Senator O. H. Platt in the copyright debate of 1891 said: "The fundamental idea of a copyright is exclusive right to vend, and the prohibition against importation from a foreign nation is necessary to the enjoyment of that right. The privilege of controlling the market is indeed essential." The copyright laws of foreign countries, and our own copyright legislation previous to 1891, carefully safeguard this right. When an author cannot assure to an American publisher the American market he cannot get from that publisher the price he would otherwise secure. In the "international copyright amendment" of 1891, Congress accompanied the manufacturing clause, which prohibited the importation of foreign copies even with the consent of the author, by a proviso permitting certain importations even without the consent of the author--on the homoeopathic principle of off-setting one restriction upon authors' rights by another restriction upon authors' rights. {Sidenote: General prohibitions} {Sidenote: Exceptions permitted} In general the law prohibits absolutely the importation of "piratical copies" or of works bearing a false notice of United States copyright; it also prohibits, even though with consent of the author and the copyright proprietor, the importation in the case of works subject to the manufacturing clause, of any copies not manufactured in this country--but this prohibition does not apply to books in raised characters for use of the blind; to foreign-made periodicals containing authorized copyright matter; to authorized copies of a work in a foreign language of which only an English translation has been copyrighted here; or to authorized copies published abroad when imported under specified exceptional circumstances. These exceptions permit the importation of authorized copies for individual use and not for sale, not more than one copy at a time (excepting a foreign reprint of a book by an American author); or by or for the United States; or by or for stated educational institutions, including libraries, not more than one copy at one time; or when parts of collections or libraries purchased and imported _en bloc_, or of personal baggage. Books imported under these exceptions cannot be adduced in defense of infringements, as the law specifically provides, _e.g._, as when such a book contains no proper United States copyright notice. Copies unlawfully imported may be seized and forfeited like other contraband importations under regulations of the United States Treasury, but it is provided that importations through the mails or otherwise may be returned to the country from which the importation is made on petition to the Secretary of the Treasury when there is no evidence of negligence or fraud. The Secretary of the Treasury and the Postmaster-General are jointly required to make regulations against unlawful importation through the mails.