"That authors and inventors have, according to the practice among civilized nations, a property in the respective productions of their genius, is incontestable; and that this property should be protected as effectually as any other property is, by law, follows as a legitimate consequence. Authors and inventors are among the greatest benefactors of mankind.... It being established that literary property is entitled to legal protection, it results that this protection ought to be afforded wherever the property is situated.... We should be all shocked if the law tolerated the least invasion of the rights of property, in the case of merchandise, whilst those which justly belong to the works of authors are exposed to daily violation, without the possibility of their invoking the aid of the laws.... In principle, the committee perceive no objection to considering the republic of letters as one great community, and adopting a system of protection for literary property which should be common to all parts of it." {Sidenote: A prophecy of world union} The address of British authors and the Clay report called forth a little volume of "Remarks on literary property" by Philip H. Nicklin, a Philadelphia publisher, printed by his own firm of "law booksellers" in 1838, and dedicated to Henry C. Carey, which, though somewhat caustic in its criticisms of some of the arguments put forward by the British authors, heartily favored international copyright. The volume, in fact, contains a glowing prophecy of what was realized in large measure in the convention of Berne a half century later, the more interesting as coming from an American publisher, who was perhaps first to realize in thought the world-wide possibilities of the movement then in its beginnings. He suggested that Congress should empower the President to appoint commissioners to meet in Europe with similar representatives from other nations "to negociate for the enactment of a _uniform_ law of literary property, and the extension of its benefits to all civilised nations. It should be a new chapter of the _Jus Gentium_, and should be one law (_iisdem verbis_) for all the enacting nations, extending over their territories in the same manner as our law of copyright extends over the territories of our twenty-six sovereign states; so that an entry of copyright in the proper office of one nation should protect the author in all the others." {Sidenote: "One just law"}