We have said that cheap literature has got beyond its scurrilous, indecent, profane, and seditious stages. Six years ago it exhibited every one of these qualities. We think it will not return to them. But there is an element of danger which, if not so revolting, is far more formidable. It is that element which has for its materials the disputes between labour and capital. There is ignorance on both sides of this question. There is indifference on the part of the State. A period of great and increasing commercial prosperity has softened down many of the coarser and fiercer aspects of these disputes; but in no case have they been reduced to an intelligible philosophy on the part of employers or of workmen. Let the prosperity of trade be interrupted by war; let our markets be narrowed; let profits necessarily fall, and wages with them; and what lessons, we may ask, have been acquired of mutual dependence and mutual interests, of conciliation and of brotherhood, in the season which was favourable to instruction? Political economy has been too long taught in a onesided spirit; but, nevertheless, its great truths remain unaltered. Are the people unwilling to search them out? Practically, are they reluctant to apply them? They know, right well, that profits and wages are distinct matters; that one belongs to capital and the other to labour; that if they are to have both they must become capitalists. They try, upon the smallest, and therefore the most hazardous scale, to unite labour and capital by cooperation. They cannot try the principle upon a larger scale, through the evil agency of our laws of partnership. The Legislature inquires into the matter, and there leaves it. The Legislature complains that strikes are ruinous to all concerned, and does nothing to bring about that union—a union of feelings as well as interests—which would destroy strikes. The Legislature says that the people have no economical or historical knowledge, and forbids Free Libraries. Sixty years ago, Burke calculated that there were eighty thousand readers in this country. If Burke had lived in times when there are fourteen hundred thousand buyers of cheap weekly sheets, whose readers probably amount to five millions, would his great philosophical mind have said, as modern legislation says, Do whatever you can to prevent this reading going in a right direction; you cannot stop reading, but you can keep the cheap literature debased, by denying the people access to the great original thinkers who would lift them out of their intellectual twilight into a brighter day? Would Edmund Burke have given such counsel? Would he have shrunk from admitting the people to the safe and enduring equality of a participation in the common property of mind? He would have said, as he said in 1770—"All the solemn plausibilities of the world have lost their reverence and effect." He would now have added—Build your future authority and your respect, not upon ignorance, but upon knowledge.
For the proper supply of such Free Libraries, we have a new class of Books rising fast into importance—Books of established value, carefully edited—the Poets, the Historians, the Critical and Philosophical Writers. The great Divines will not be neglected in this good work. There cannot be cheaper books of this class than Mr. Murray's 'British Classics,' than Mr. Bohn's various series, than several Collections of the Poets now in course of publication. We rejoice to see well-printed books for the Library appear at half the old prices; and to know that there is some chance of the eyes of a generation not prematurely perishing under the inflictions of a typography inferior to the ordinary newspaper. Free Libraries would create a large and certain demand for such works. With the majority, the fame of our great writers is little more than the scrolls upon their tombs. Let our glorious Literature no longer be, for the People,
"The Monument of banish'd Minds."
THE END.
Now Ready, 2 Vols. Fcap. 8vo. 10s.
ONCE UPON A TIME.
By CHARLES KNIGHT.
"The old bees die, the young possess the hive."
Shakspere.