and England. Famous authors such as Charles Dickens came to the United States to show their support for international copyright. Their biggest problem were American printers that already were protected by a high tariff on imported works, and who had no wish to pay royalties to English writers or publishers. The United States discussed international copyright with Great Britain over the years. Congress requested correspondence to this effect in 1842. There was a proposed treaty in 1853 under Millard Fillmore, and consideration of its ratification continued into an extension provided during Franklin Pierce's presidency in 1854. Nonetheless, in the United States, only works published in the United States could be restricted with copyright. Authors including Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, Edward Eggleston, and Bill Nye wrote letters in the mid-1880s to the Century requesting international copyright. These letters to the journals had a strong effect on this issue, as did the American Copyright League that was formed in 1883. The League was a great supporter of an International Copyright Act and, at the Madison Square Theater in 1885, the League sponsored readings by American authors in aid of the League's cause. In 1885, United States Senator Joseph Roswell Hawley introduced a bill aimed at extending copyright to foreign authors for consideration by Congress. A chief difference between the Hawley Bill and the eventual Chace Bill was Hawley's removal of publisher and book-sellers' interests in the copyright process. It was ultimately unsuccessful, though Mark Twain involved himself in the lobbying process and influenced President Grover Cleveland's thinking on the matter. Cleveland asked Congress for legislation to this effect in his State of the Union address that December. "National treatment" While the United States was refusing any protection for foreign literary works, more and more countries in Europe started adapting the principle of "national treatment". This principle meant that each nation that signed the treaty was obligated to protect works produced by nationals of all other treaty members on the same terms that it protects its own nationals. In 1884, academics, writers and diplomats met in Berne, Switzerland, to begin the work to form a multilateral copyright treaty. This was based on the principle of national treatment together with minimum standards so that a member country would be free to treat the copyrighted work of its own nationals however they chose to, but when it came to the works from other treaty