The Shropshire Examiner and all round the Wrekin advertiser. — 1875-08-27 (Wenlock, Shropshire, England)

PROTECTION FOR COPYRIGHT.  The London Telegraph says: "An undeniable justifi able and sternly equitable concession has at length been made to France by Great Britain, in the matter of dramatic copyright. On the 11th of August Lord Derby, on the part of this country, and the Marquis d'Harcourt, representing the French Republic, attached their signatures to a declaration cancelling the 3rd Section of the 4th Article of the Copyright Convention of 1811, by which it was stipulated that the protection enjoyed by dramatic authors was not tc extend to 'fair imitations or adaptations to the stage in England and France respectively.' Piratical —that is to say, verbatim et literatim—translations were alone prohibited ; but the effect of the cancelling of the paragraph in question will relieve the courts of law from the unpleasant task of deciding what is or what is not a fair imitation or adaptation, and will make any imitation or adaptation of any dramatic piece whatsoever a piracy. The, can be no doubt that in consenting to this alteration in a vague and unsatisfactory convention strict justice, and no more than justice, has been done to the dramatic authors of France. We may somewhat ruefully contemplate the fact that the new provision cuts only one way; but fiat juslitia ! and the wrong must be remedied, even if the nature of the ease affords no scope for reciprocity. We do not produce any dramatic literature which the French would think worth stealing, or which, under the modified convention, they would care about paying us for with a view to performance on their own stage. Many of our must popular dramas and farces are of French extraction. But now that we have consented to become honest, the terrible question arises as to whence we are hi procure fresh dramas and fresh farces without paying for them. For the French, in matters of business, are a hard people to deal with. They will make John Bull pay heavily for the right of adapting their frequently untranslatable pieces to the Brit ish stage; and that stage must be fed somehow, for it seems clear that we cannot live entirely on indigenous five-act tragedies, or on operas bouffes. Meanwhile, we may expect experts in copywright to tell us whether under the amended convention, a French author's plot, as well as his characters and his dialogue, must be held sacred. The plots of many of the most favourite of modern French pieces are impudently lifted' from the works of the elder French dramatists—from Regnier, front Marivaux, front Crebillon, and even from the earlier productions of Scribe. French plots by the hundred have been plundered from the Spaniards Cervantes, Calderon, Lope the Vega, Gongoza, and Luis del Paso, from the Italians Goldoni and Metastasis, and from the Germans Kotzebue and Leasing. If an English dramatic author happen to be a ripe Spanish, Italian, and German scholar, and chance to stumble on a story which is two or three hundred years old, but which has just been used as the basis of a drama at the Vaudeville or a farce at the Palais Royal, is he to be deemed a 'pirate' within the meaning of the amended Copyright Convention ? "  The return of animals affected with the foot and mouth dissase in East Suffolk shows an increase of several hundreds over last week.  A gigantic figure of Christ is being erected on the heights of Oberammergau, near Munich, and will be solemnly unveiled on the 254th, the anniversary of King Louis' accession to the throne of Bavaria. The statue weighs 25,000 kilogs., and a wall had to be demolished in order to carry it from the workshop.  Joseph Drinkwater and Joseph Stonestreet were charged at Brentford on Mondaywith the wilful murder of a woman, name unknown, at Southall, on the Pith instant. Prisoners, who admitted having been with the woman in a public-house, and afterwards in the North r, tad, where her body was found, were both remanded.