Excerpt from Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States: Being the Second Session of the Forty-Ninth Congress, Begun and Held at the City of Washington, December 6, 1886, in the One Hundred and Eleventh Year of the Independence of the United States Inasmuch as the Constitution gives to Congress the power to pro mote the progress of science. And useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries, this Government did not feel warranted in becoming a signatory pending the action of Congress upon measures of international copyright now before it, but the right Of adhesion to the Berne Convention hereafter has been reserved. I trust the subject will receive at your hands the attention it deserves, and that the just claims of authors, so urgently pressed, will be duly heeded. Representations continue to be made to me of the injurious effect upon American artists studying abroad and having free access to the art collections of foreign countries, of maintaining a discriminating duty against the introduction of the works of their brother artists of other countries; and I am induced to repeat my recommendation for the abolition of that tax. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.