salary for and towards his compensation and clerk hire. The second section provides that, by the terms of the contract, “the reporter of decisions of the supreme judicial court shall not be required or allowed to publish the Reports thereof, but shall prepare and furnish the same to said Little, Brown & Co. seasonably for publication, according to said contract,” and “the stereotype plates and copyright of the volumes published under said contract shall be the property of said firm.” The third section provides that “all sums of money received by the reporter for the copies of opinions, rescripts, and other papers shall be paid over by him quarterly to the treasurer of the commonwealth, with a detailed statement of the same.”
The contract made in pursuance of this statute contains the provision that “the reporter shall not publish, or furnish for publication, any Reports of said decisions in any other manner,” differing from the statutes, by the addition of the words “or furnish for publication.” We do not think that those words add anything to the meaning of the contract. But if the added words are beyond the scope of the statute, and give any right not sustained by it, they are beyond the authority conferred upon the secretary, and can have no effect.
We must look to the statute only to determine whether the respondent has the right which he claims in his answer. The purpose of the statute was to make provision for the prompt publication of the series of official reports, known as the “Massachusetts Reports,” at a reasonable price. The first and second sections look only to this purpose, and deal with no other subject. They do not in terms confer upon Little, Brown & Co. the power to interfere with the public and common right to examine and procure copies of the opinions of the justices, and they do not, upon any reasonable construction, confer such a power by implication.
The provisions that the reporter, during the term of the contract, “shall not be required or allowed to publish the Reports,” and that “the copyright of the volumes published under said contract shall be the property of said firm,” were necessary to define clearly the rights of the firm and the duties of the reporter. Under the previous laws, the reporter was obliged to publish the Reports, and he had the copyright in the volumes in his own care. The provisions in question were needed to repeal the existing laws, and to carry out the scheme of the new law. But the legislature did not attempt to determine whether the copyright covered the opinions of the justices. The intent of the statute was that Little, Brown & Co. should have the right of publishing the Reports, which had before rested in the reporter.
The words “to publish the Reports,” in the second section, are manifestly used in the same sense in which the same words are used in the first section, and refer to the issue to the public of the Massachusetts Reports. It would be a strained construction to hold that they were intended to prohibit the reporter from allowing the public the right to examine the opinions, or to prepare copies or extracts.
The third section, providing that the reporter shall account to the state for all sums of money received for copies, tends to show that the legis-
