Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/507

PROVINCIAL BOOKSELLERS. 465 In 1834 and in 1836 he was again fined, but now he could afford to pay. The Government next tried to seize the papers while in the hands of the carriers, and they were obliged consequently to be sent through the country carefully concealed embedded in a chest of tea or a hamper of shoes. As soon, however, as the duty was reduced from fourpence to a penny, the poorer classes were able to pay for stamped papers. Abel Hey wood was, nevertheless, again the subject of a legal prosecution for the publication of a penny pamphlet by Haslam. Acting with vigorous prompt- ness, he caused three or four copies of Shelley's works to be purchased from the chief Manchester booksellers, and then contended that the poems were more blasphemous than his pamphlet. The Govern- ment did not care to excite the ill-feelings of the read- ing public by sending booksellers of position to prison, and as the cases were precisely similar, they relin- quished the prosecution. Probably this decisive con- duct suggested the same course to Hetherington, who was afterwards the cause of that famous trial, the Queen v. Moxon. In 1838, Fergus O'Connor started the Northern Star, and for four years its prosperity at the time was unexampled. Hey wood sold 18,000 copies weekly. By degrees his periodical trade increased enormously. In 1847 he joined some paper-stainers, and the firm soon became one of the largest in the world. In the year 1860 the paper duty paid by them amounted to more than 20,000. Among the most successful of his recent publications have been " Abel Heywood's Penny Guide Books." The series now embraces upwards of seventy-five numbers, referring to every place of importance or Jnterest in the kingdom. He