This chapter documents how British writer, Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine used the Berne Convention to popularise authors’ rights on a speaking tour of Canada in 1895 (where on behalf of the Society of Authors, British Parliament and American publishers he was tasked with preventing Canada’s effective withdrawal from the Berne Convention). Caine’s efforts demonstrate how the tension between the utopian idea of copyright as a natural right and the political pragmatism that Ricketson identified as underpinning the Berne Convention 1886 played out in practice. This history helps us understand how the idea of a universal right of authors continues to influence the public imagination as the main rationale for copyright.