PUBLIC TRUSTEE 



6388 



PUBLISHING 



years old, to which they usually 

 pass from preparatory schools. The 

 public schools offer entrance scho- 

 larships, for which there is keen 

 competition, and most of them 

 give scholarships to help boys to 

 proceed to the university. 



Most of the public schools are old 

 foundations, some of them, ' .-/. 

 Uppingham, having been origin- 

 ally grammar schools, which were 

 reformed and enlarged to suit their 

 present purpose during the 19th 

 century. Others, e.g. Wellington, 

 are new foundations entirely. 



In 1861 a royal commission was 

 appointed to inquire into the con- 

 dition of nine of the chief endowed 

 or public schools, and important 

 reforms followed its report, these 

 being embodied in the Public 

 Schools Act of 1868. The nine 

 were Eton, Winchester, S. Paul's, 

 Westminster, Charterhouse, Har- 

 row, Rugby, Shrewsbury, and 

 Merchant Taylors'. 



The English public school sys- 

 tem has spread to Scotland, where 

 Fettes, Loretto, and other schools 

 have been established ; to Canada, 

 Australia, and S. Africa, and to 

 some extent to the U.S.A. Par- 

 ticulars of the chief public schools 

 are given in The Public Schools 

 Year Book, and their headmasters 

 meet annually in the Headmasters' 

 Conference. See Education ; Eton ; 

 Harrow ; School ; Shrewsbury ; 

 Winchester, etc. 



Public Trustee. English official 

 appointed by virtue of the Official 

 Trustee Act, 1906, which became 

 operative, Jan. 1, 1908. He is a 

 corporation sole whose business it 

 is to act as executor and trustee of 

 the estate of anyone in England 

 who appoints him. The Act does 

 not extend to Scotland or Ireland. 

 He can be appointed alone, or 

 with a co-trustee or trustees, and 

 the great advantage of so appoint- 

 ing him lies in the certainty that 

 the funds of the trust will not be 

 frittered away, nor embezzled, 

 nor lost in speculation, as some- 

 times happens in the case of a 

 private trustee. He charges certain 

 small fees, generally by way of 

 percentage on receipts, for his ser- 

 vices. Anyone who chooses may 

 deposit his will, or a copy thereof, 

 with the public trustee, for use 

 when the time comes. 



The Great War added consider- 

 ably to the work of the department. 

 Thousands of seamen's wills were 

 deposited, and on the occasion of 

 a naval mishap, hundreds of wills 

 had to be administered at the same 

 time. An important part of the 

 public trustee's duties was acting 

 as custodian of enemy property in 

 England and Wales. The continued 

 usefulness of the services of the 



public trustee was seen in the re- 

 port for the year ending March 31, 

 1923, when, as a result of the year's 

 working, there was a surplus of 

 75,490, due mainly to reduction of 

 expenditure owing to economies 

 effected. The aggregate value of 

 new business during the year was 

 15,332,309, and the number of 

 new cases accepted was 955. The 

 number of cases under administra- 

 tion on Mar. 31, 1923, was 15,600, 

 having an estimated value of ap- 

 proximately 168,600,000. On 

 April 1, 1921, a new and higher 

 scale of fees came into force. The 

 offices of the public trustee are 

 Sardinia House, Kingsway, Lon- 

 don, W.C., and there is a branch 

 .office at Albert Square, Manchester. 

 Oswald R. A. Simpkin has been 

 public trustee since 19i.9. There 

 is also one for Ireland. 



Public Worship Regulation 

 Act. Act of Parliament, passed in 

 1874 to regulate the administration 

 of the laws relating to the perform- 

 ance of divine service according 

 to the use of the Church of England. 

 It created a new court for the pur- 

 pose, and any three parishioners 

 could complain to the bishop of 

 the diocese of alleged illegal pro- 

 ceedings in the Church services. 

 He might veto the case at his dis- 

 cretion or allow it to proceed. Ap- 

 peal lay from the decision of the 

 judge to the judicial committee of 

 the privy council. The punishment 

 of a condemned incumbent was 

 first inhibition and then depriva- 

 tion. Lord Penzance was ap- 

 pointed the first judge of the new 

 court. The Act has seldom been 

 resorted to, and is virtually a dead 

 letter. See Ecclesiastical Law. 



PUBLISHING AND BOOKSELLING 



William Heinemann, Founder of the firm of Win. Heinemann, Ltd. 



Other articles which may be consulted in this connexion are Book ; 



Printing. See also the biographies of leading publishers, e.g. 



Chambers ; Murray ; Macmillan ; and, others 



Publishing is the business of 

 multiplying literary works. Book- 

 selling is the business of distribut- 

 ing the multiplied copies. Before 

 the invention of printing these 

 functions were performed by the 

 same person, and the copies were 

 written in longhand. In antiquity 

 copies of literary works were 

 written on the bark of trees, 

 papyrus leaves, skins, etc., and 

 there was no general method of 

 book production. In ancient 

 Greece the small number of copies 

 of books that could be produced 

 Were deposited in the state collec- 

 tions, where one copy served many 

 readers. When these were sup- 

 plied, some traders probably sold 

 MS. copies to the public. There was 

 little idea of writing for money, 

 and authors bid chiefly for the 

 laurel crown of contemporary 

 fame. The Greek theatre had an 

 influence so widespread, and was so 

 generally visited by all sections of 

 society, that it sufficed for the pre- 

 servation of the great dramatic 

 works of ancient Greece. Public 

 rhapsodists and readers were a 

 substitute for individual reading. 

 In Alexandria, which was for cen- 

 turies the great book-producing 

 centre of the world, the first 

 systematic effort was made to 

 multiply Greek works which had 

 been accepted as classics. The li- 

 brary of Alexandria was the world's 

 great bookstore, the collecting 

 station of all in search of know- 

 ledge. Its destruction by the Arabs, 

 if we may trust tradition, was an 

 irreparable loss to the world, and 



was responsible for the disappear- 

 ance of a large number of important 

 works of classical antiquity. 



In Rome we have in the Augus- 

 tan period a clear record of a well- 

 organized body of publishers ; they 

 had connexions in Athens, Asia 

 Minor, and Alexandria, and em- 

 ployed Greek scribes for the copy- 

 ing of the works they acquired in 

 the East. Their trade seems to 

 have been with Italy, Spain, and 

 Gaul, and as far even as Britain. In 

 the writings of Horace and Mar- 

 tial we get the first indication of 

 business relations between authors 

 and publishers, and Cicero's friend 

 Atticus (a patron of letters rather 

 than a man of business) and the 

 Sosii were Roman publishers of 

 distinction. Imperial favour (e.g. 

 of Augustus), or that of wealthy 

 people such as Maecenas, con- 

 tributed towards defraying the 

 cost of production, but Roman 

 publishers paid certain authors for 

 the works they multiplied and dis- 

 tributed. After the fall of the 

 Roman Empire, during a long 

 period, all literary production was 

 confined to religious orders, and in 

 the scriptoria of the monasteries the 

 functions of the copyists of the 

 ancient bookshops were carried on. 

 The earliest organized book trade, 

 independent of that carried on by 

 religious orders, we find in Bologna 

 and in Paris, occupied chiefly in 

 producing text-books for the uni- 

 versities. 



Then in the middle of the 15th 

 century came the invention of 

 printing, which caused the greatest 



