from which our people have been accustomed to derive their supplies of
literary food. Before granting to these persons any power here, it might
be well to inquire how they have used their power at home. Doing this, we
find that, as is usually the case with those enjoying a monopoly, they
have almost uniformly preferred to derive their profits from high prices
and small sales, and have thus, in a great degree, deprived their
countrymen of the power to purchase books; a consequence of which has been
that the reading community has, very generally, been driven to dependence
upon circulating libraries, to the injury of both the authors and the
public. The extent to which this system of high prices in regard to
school-books has been carried, and the danger of intrusting such men with
power, are well shown in the fact that the same government which has so
recently concluded a copyright treaty with our own, has since entered
"into the bookselling trade on its own account," competing "with the
private dealer, who has to bear copyright charges." The subjects of this
"reactionary step" on the part of a government that so much professes to
love free trade, are, as we are told, "the famous school-books of the
Irish national system."[1] A new office has been created, "paid for with a
public salary," for "the issue of books to the retail dealers;" and the
centralization of power over this important portion to the trade is, we
are told,[2] defended in the columns of the "Times," as "tending to bring
down the price of school-books; for booksellers who possess copyrights,
now sell their books at exorbitant prices, and, by underselling them, the
commissioners will be able to beat them." Judging from this, it would seem
almost necessary, if this treaty is to be ratified, that there should be
added some provision authorizing our government to appoint commissioners
for the regulation of trade, and for "underselling" those persons who "now
sell their books at exorbitant prices." If it be ratified, we shall be
only entering on the path of centralization; and it may not be amiss that,
before ratification, we should endeavor to determine to what point it will