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that stouter stuff of w ]^ a £ « te < jnsgro som e Sunt , a ^ d of wJiich evto thereat Kidmg ean ££# gpqd supplied There stObeatsm ln ^ l ^ d a h eart stouter thaa that selfish and cruel TTuma nitarianisini of the counter and the - ' mill , which faints at the sight of blood , shuts its eyes at the bright gleam of" a sword , closes its , ears to the cry ofv bleeding nations , and contemplates , without horror--at a d ^ tarice—^ the possibility that a foreign foe might violate our sacred homes . And in rousing that heart to its duty before it be too late , many a severed political partymight jo m- ; ; . ' - ¦• - '¦ / : V " . " - . ¦• , ' .. . ' ' ¦ . ' •¦ ¦
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BREAK-UP OF THE BOOK-TRADE SY / STEM . The book-buying vorld has outgrown the present system of bookselling , and that system is falling to pieces by force of the struggles which its members make to accpmnibdate their oven condition to the circumstances ; but in the present aspect of the contest , it appears to us tnat Reformers lose sight of two or three facts which ought not to be omitted from the account . If the present restrictions be burst , the whole character of the trade will alter , the number of books will augment beyond calculation ; any check upon their character , which is already failing ' in practice > will be ( destroyed ; and , as we believe , a very general deterioration will spread over the vast field of book-making , reducmg ^ it to the level of all other trades . Adulteration will become , not the exception , but the rule . Already ; most books are bad enough- —but to have books Hke ordinary coffee ! yet such , with much lowered price , quantities beyond control , incessant competition , and no end to mercenary tools that are but Waiting for emplovment , is the inevitable result . We say nothing against the free trade ; althoughwe hold that literature is not
well engaged wlien it is subject to any trading process at all ; we believe that itmust go ' through that stage of laissez alter j therefore let u » at least face the immediate consequences . If the impending evil were distinctly , yet generally foreseen , some suggestion might be thrown out to mitigate it . To regulate literature by supply and demand , is to invert the natural order of sense . Ignbrance never knows its own want , and never will demand the supply it needs . On the o . ther hand , love of gain , mercantile " demand , " is not the true motive to good teaching , to good art , or to
any intellectual or moral good . Grive schoolboys the kind of tutor they demand ^ select for tutor the man who will be guided entirely by popularity-hunting , or by the motive for screwing pence out of the boys , and you would convert the school into the casino . Adulteration awaits a literature regulated by supply and demand , even more than it is now : we are going to be flooded with catchpenny trifles , "• fast" books , and works too sliglit even to be powerfully mischievous—idle things which he that runs may read ; and those which one must stop to read will be left to shift for themselves by the universal dictator .
Books are to be treated as ordinary manufactures , to be sold as ordinary merchandize : let authors , however , remember , that cotton goods have no " authors , " unless the designer , with his 40 $ . , is to stand for the author . The original workman of most goods goes by the wall ; and now the rule is to be applied to books . It is so decreed past revocation , and wo seek not to rovoko it : but the authors might as well consider what is going to happen . At present they seem to be establishing , not a republic of letters , but anarchy—abolishing Protection , and substituting
Proudhonism . In replying to tho question put forth by Messrs . John W . Parker and Son , they should consider something beyond the mere process of undoing . Messrs . Parker and Son ask tho authors ' opinion as to the maintenance of tke fixed selling price , or the licence for retailers to sell at any lower price . The whole movement , we believe , involves tho abandonment of tho fixed , selling price , and Will leave tlio nublishinff nrifio . if iinv . as the-fixed
point . But what is likely to happen subsequently P The publishers , not wishing to boeomo ontangledin complicated accounts , will again make preferential reductions to allied friends ; tho publishing price will bo calculated with a view to those reductions , and thon we shall bo where wo are now . We presume such ultorior combination , since Jtt iB tho very essence of perfect freedom , to prohibit nothing , not oven combination . Under
perfect freedom , of course , it would still be competent to form an association of booksellers , like the present , refusing to deal with any persons but those who conform to allits rules . - And in some degree such a combination is almost certain to exist , . " .: ' ¦ - , ¦ ¦ ¦ . ; ¦•¦ '¦¦ ¦ ¦ ; ' - ¦¦ ' ; / : ¦ ' . ' . ... . ; ' . Men will combine wherever they see that a common interest is to Be promoted or expedited by the combination . " Free trade is but a negation , after all ; it only settles the question of restrictions rendered compulsory % f some power ab extra : it has not prevented railway amalgamations , nor even compinations against the public by railway companies , though competing between themselves . It has not prevented the
Amalgamated Masters of the engineering trades from combining against the workmen , whom they force to work Longer at low wages than the men desire . Free trade , in short , cannot regulate the waits and wishes of society . It will be therefore but to share in a vulgar infatuation , if authors dr publishers , or even booksellers of any foresight , should trust solely to free trade , into which tjkey are now invited to plunge without reservation , ft is the more needful for authors to reflect , since , strictly speaking , they do not enter into
trade at all , except in rare cases . Nor is the training of mind suited to most kinds of literature , suited to the pursuits of commerce . Unless therefore they secure a machinery for securing their mterests , —some broad plan which , settled once fox alii shall be self-working , except under exceptional stipulations—they will only hand themselves over , 1 > odily , to be swamped among a new creation of jobbing book-makers , and literature will be buried under theheap of books- —a Pompeii under the dust and ashes belched forward « by a volcano of hireling fervour .
Alter the present system by all means ; it is bad , obsolete , indefensible : and though it were best of the best , as little to be kept alive as a man whose last hour is come ¦ ¦ ¦ . but when you pull down , know what is to stand in the place of the old structure—^ -if you are diligent with the pickaxe , have your trowel ready—or at least know what you dre doing .
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THE HAUNTED CAMP . Schwaezekbebg , the Mahomet of Austria , who added to the spirit of Metternich the aggressive sabre of proselytism , is dead , but still survives in spirit : and his coadjutors are of two ordersthose who work in the councils of Austria , and those who work in the councils of the patriots . " When the revolution of 1848 broke out , " says the Vienna correspondent of the Times , " there were no Austrians *; " and so now it is resolved to liave some . They are not to be grown , but made out of materials ready at hand ; for
the military doctors of Vienna have discovered how to mate an Austrian out of a Bohemian , a Magyar , a Croat , or an Italian . The army is the instrument . The plan is not to enlist them as soldiers ; to put the badge of the two-beaked eagle does not suffice to convert a Magyar or a Venetian into an Austrian ; but the army , numbering four or five hundred thousand , is to be used as a school for teaching the alien members of the Provinces German , to Germanize them ; and thus , in seven years or so , Hungarians , Bohemians , Italians , will be Austrianized . The dead Italian will bocome a live Austrian . Such is the scheme . Let
the Englishman understand it . It is not as if England wore to forbid Gaelic to Ireland or hilly Scotland , Trench to Jersey , and Norse to the Orkneys ; but as if the Isle of Man were to forbid those other provinces their languago , and English to England , —to crush tho languago of Burke , of Shakespeare , of Burns , of Scott , of Gibbon , and make the tongue of literature Manx . The high patriotic strain of Dante , tho pictured song of Ariosto , are to bo obsolete . Of course , so mad and criminal a schomo is forbidden by its impraotioabiUty ; but tho project betrays the extremes to which tho active despotism of Austria will go . Metternich said that " Italy was a geographical expression ; " the swordodMottorhicb . would oras , o
her language . . We have still around us tho multiplying instances of the wide oxtent over which this merciless despotism is spreading its machinery . By accepting Bussian aid in Hungary Schwarzonberg riveted anew tho alliance between the empires ; and he managed that alliance bo woll , that the protSgS has become tho eo-ordinato , tho initiator . Prussia , despite lingering schemes ot her own , is dragged into tho Holy Alliance . And
in France , although the Holy Alliance ? s evidently unpledged to support tfie ; new family-, there is a congenial machinery in active operation at its service . t \ «• The working of this machinery on the model of St . Petersbufgh or Vienna is complete . Irouis JNapoleon sits at the centre and dictates , and bis subordinates , one under the other , manage the affairs of Frenchmen for them . The press is edited by a Censorship . The Professors of Col * leges are weeded , shaved , and instructed > by the Interior , The Prefects are set to watch the
effects of literature , social converse , instruction , amusements , on the people . The Minister summons the managers of theatres and tells them that nothing hazardous to the morals of the people will henceforth be permitted . In short , all France is in tutelage to Gore House . It may be amusing to us who look on ; but imagine the feelings of a Frenchman who remembers what it was to be free , in act , tongue , and thought ! As if to show what the solicitude for the public
morals does not mean , the President attends the performance of the Dame aux Camelias— -not young Alexandra Dumas ' s delicately daring novel of that name , but a " fast" drama founded on it , with no little heightening of midnight orgies and slack vicissitudes . And to mark his enjoyment of the scene , Louis If apoleon sends round a present to Mademoiselle Doche , the representative of the not inaccessible lady in the play : thus the Pericles of Leicester Square lies at the feet of Aspasia , and issues decrees to keep France in good nursing . ,
The French machinery is ready to be incorporated in that of Austria , with or without the present tenant at will , as the case may be , but in capital working order . Already it is in excellent understanding with Austria k Rome ; and is helping to settle the Danish succession on the Baltic . The Holy Alliance stands prepared , with its two millions or three millions of armies ; and its guiding power talks of expunging Bohemia , Hungary , ~ arid-Italy , as Poland has been expunged . At such a time , what is the conduct of the patriot party , whose mission , if it lias a mission ,
is to oppose that gigantic conspiracy ? We shall divulge no secrets , we shall make no comments ; we shall maintain the neutrality , the silence that we believe to be the duty of every patriot of Europe when good men are at fault . But we must note a few , a very few facts , patent to all the world . Let the mention suffice . A most eminent Italian patriot , teaching his countrymen their duty , makes a sudden and unprovoked assault on a party in France that includes men earnest and stedfast , who have worked and suffered , unchanged through all changes . The
aggrieved party retorts , with disclosures intended fatally to diminish the influence of that Italian patriot , with asseverations that lie is not the leader of the Italians . Maybe so . But if he is not , who is P Wo look in vain for any one man who is at least the leader of so considerable a portion . Yet unquestionably mistakes have been made . Let one fact speak . Few men have done more to bring tho despotic influences into discredit than tho stinging satirist Giusti—a Peter Pindar with the polish of Voltaire ! Who has more contributed to keep alive tho firo of
patriotism , even in the very heart of slavery , than the sweet and impassioned writer of " The Conscript ' s Mother , "—BerchetP Yet Berchet and Giusti are not of much account among patriots , par excellence . They wore moderates , monarchists , or modified in somo heterodox way ; and they aro of comparatively little use to " United Italy . ' Whoro such results are , there must bo Bomothing wrong . Whcro genius finds not its vocation , where d evotion survives the trtiBt which it has but onco commanded , where a people with a common interest are divided , the common cause must have had anerroneousuttoranco . Withltaly ,
tho ono quostion was , or ought to have been , tho expulsion of tho Stranger ; but that wag merged in ulterior and sectional questions . It is tho samo all over Europe : the people , social or domocratio , is divided against tho great tyrant Alien—for tho tyrant is ovor an alien , even amid liis own kin . Tho peoplos want more scourging . - Tho ghost of Schwarjconberg prowls about tho cam p of the patriots , sowing discord ; the patriots , lorgotting the sacred duty of union , consent to bo against each other tho instruments of an immortal Austria —immortal while they are divided . Is this right P Lot conscience ask itself the quostion in , tho anxious calm of midnitrht thought .
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Leader (1850-1860), May 8, 1852, page 441, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1934/page/13/
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