are, as we are told, at this moment engaged in organizing a combination
that shall have the effect of dividing in fair proportion among the wolves
the numerous flocks of sheep.

On all former occasions Northern advocates of literary monopolies assured
us that it was in that direction, and in that alone, we were to look for
the cheapening of books. Now, nothing of this sort is at all pretended. On
the contrary, we are here told of the extreme impropriety of a system
which makes it necessary for a New England essayist to accept a single
dollar for a volume that under other circumstances would sell for half a
guinea; of the wrong to such essayists that results from the issue of
cheap "periodicals made up of selections from the reviews and magazines of
Europe;" of the "abominable extravagance of buying a great and good novel
in a perishable form for a few cents;" of the increased accessibility of
books by the "masses of the people" that must result from increasing
prices; and of the greatly increased facility with which circulating
libraries may be formed whensoever the "great and wealthy houses" shall
have been given power to claim from each and every reader of Dickens's
novels, as their share of the monopoly profits, thrice as much as he now
pays for the book itself! This, however, is only history repeating itself
with a little change of place, the argument of to-day, coming from the
North, being an almost exact repetition of that which, twenty years since,
came from the South--from the mouths of men who rejoiced in the fact
that no newspapers were published in their districts, and who well _knew_
that the way towards preventing the dissemination of knowledge lay in the
direction of granting the monopoly privileges that had been asked. The
anti-slavery men of the present thus repeat the argument of the
pro-slavery men of the past, extremes being thus brought close together.

Our people are here assured that Russia, Sweden, and other countries are