1826. ] The Book- Trade. 21 
exist in which every book which is printed in this country should be 
preserved. There are many reasons which contribute to render one 
universal depét of this kind of great value to the cause of letters; and 
the adoption of the fifth resolution would conjoin with the advantages 
peculiar to such an establishment ; those objects of police which are 
now fulfilled by each printer being required to retain a copy of every 
work he prints, which forms the twelfth, which the public, in one shape 
or another, wrest, without payment, from the author and publisher of 
every book. As to the second branch of the first resolution, it is im- 
material to us whether the House of Commons chooses or not to add to 
the endowments of some of the public libraries—we care not whence 
come their funds—we argue only that they should buy such books as 
they wish for, and not seize them for nothing. 
hese resolutions, be it remembered, are not the production of an 
interested or ignorant body; they form the issue to which a Committee 
of the House of Commons, specially selected for the purpose, arrived, 
after the mature consideration of a most voluminous mass of evidence 
on both sides the question. That Parliament was shortly afterwards 
dissolved: and in the next, notwithstanding a petition from the book- 
sellers, no further steps seem to have been taken on the subject. A 
decision more explicit and complete could scarcely be made upon any 
question. But wniversities have representatives in Parliament, and book- 
sellers have not. Surely some of the distinguished persons connected 
with literature, who are in Parliament, might despise the call of their 
alma mater in an unjust claim, and plead the cause of that more general 
and generous mother, Learninc. The esprit du corps of an university 
ought to yield before the interests of the republic of letters at large. 
Every free citizen of that distinguished state should regard her claims 
upon him as the foremost and most binding of all. 
We have now set forth two great sources of the evils which ex- 
tensively afflict the book-trade. But, before we proceed to suggest re- 
medies for them respectively, we shall very briefly advert to some minor 
circumstances, existing within the trade itself, which tend to its general 
disadvantage. 
We allude to a most impudent and barefaced system of piracy which 
has recently been set on foot, and is now carried to an unparalleled and 
most injurious extent. There are a set of weekly periodical works, which 
profess (and they adhere to their profession most rigidly) to have no 
original matter of their own, but to cull their contents from all the best 
articles of the best periodicals of the day. At the sole expense of the 
principal and interest of the price of a pair of scissars, these most im- 
pertinent robbers appropriate first-rate articles, for which their proprie- 
tors have paid first-rate prices, and thus render their sheet a pasticcio of 
the compositions of the most eminent writers of the time, who contribute 
to the various reviews and magazines of various descriptions. We can- 
not conceive how this system of flagrant pillage has been allowed to go 
on so long, and we would most strenuously recommend Messrs. Longman, 
Murray, Colburn, Whittaker, Blackwood, &c. &c. to put a stop at once 
to the picking of their pockets by these knaves, by prosecuting for piracy 
number after number of their most nefarious and most impudent publi- 
cations. We can assure them the matter is not so much below their 
notice as they may think : for these fellows, getting for nothing that for 
which they have paid in proportion to its quality, stitch together a set of 
