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 for a 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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