But in 1777--ten years after Diderot's plea--the Council decreed that copyright was a privilege and an exercise of the royal grace.

The motives for this reduction of an author's right from a transferable property to a terminable privilege seem to have been, first, the general mania of the time for drawing up the threads of national life into the hands of the administration, and second, the hope of making money by a tariff of permissions.

The Constituent Assembly dealt with the subject with no intelligence nor care, but the Convention passed a law recognising in the author an exclusive right for his life, and giving a property for ten years after his death to heirs or _cessionaires_.

The whole history is elaborately set forth in the collection of documents entitled _La Propriete litteraire au 18ieme siecle_.

(Hachette, 1859.)] [Footnote 243: Oct.