HINTS FOR EXTENDING THEIR CIRCULATION. 405 
ever excellent or however important. Yet there 
are some measures, of an indirect nature, which 
would materially promote the same object, and 
soften the peculiar disadvantages attending the 
authors of costly publications. In the first place, 
those who wish it might be exempt from all the 
advantages and the penalties of the copyright act, 
and the government, instead of claiming eleven 
presentation copies, might, without a charge of 
great extravagance, subscribe for an equal number, 
and present them, as a gift of the crown, to the chief 
public libraries of the nation. In the next place, let 
a drawback be allowed on the excise duties paid on 
the paper consumed, provided it amounts to a cer- 
tain given sum, and is of such a description as to 
show, at once, that it has been used fora large sized 
and expensive work. These two concessions, simple 
and practicable as they undoubtedly are, would at 
once have a powerful effect on the publications in 
question ; and this in two ways: first, by diminishing 
the original cost, and consequently removing the 
great obstacle to their extended sale, now existing in 
their high price ; and secondly, by thus enabling the 
publishers to find a market for works of this descrip- 
tion on the Continent, where the high price of those 
published in Britain acts almost like a prohibition to 
their sale. It is a well-known fact, that the costs 
of publishing a book in England are exactly double 
what they are in Paris ; a difference easily explained 
by the heavy duties upon our paper, and the higher 
wages of English printers. It therefore follows, that 
the high price of English books, but more especially 
those of which we are now speaking, almost excludes 
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