right law as you have been discussing would be disadvantageous to literature of the graver kind?
A. I think I have. "First Principles" was published in 1862, and in the course of some years the doctrine it contains underwent, in my mind, a considerable further development, and I found it needful to reorganize the book. I spent five months in doing this; canceled a large number of the stereotype plates; and was thus at considerable cost of time and money. As I have already pointed out, the work being now in its fourth thousand, has had a degree of success such that there might, under the proposed arrangement, very possibly have been a rival edition at the time I proposed to make these alterations. Had there been such a rival edition, this cost of reorganization to me would have been more serious even than it was; since the difference between the original and the improved edition, adequately known only to those who bought the improved edition, would not have prevented the sale of the rival edition; and the sale of the improved edition would have greatly diminished. In any case the errors of the first edition would have been more widely spread; and, in the absence of ability to bear considerable loss, it would have been needful to let them go and become permanent. A kindred tendency to the arrest of improvements would occur with all scientific books and all books of the higher kind, treating of subjects in a state of growth.
Q. With the object of rendering useful books as accessible as possible to the public, do you think that those engaged in their production and distribution should be restrained from making what might be called undue profits?
A. In answer to the first part of the question I hope to say something presently, showing that the advantage of increased accessibility of books is by no means unqualified; since greater accessibility may be a mischief, if it tells in favor of worthless books instead of valuable books. But, passing this for the present, I would comment on the proposition, which I perceive has been made before the commission, that it is desirable to secure for books "the cheapest possible price consistent with a fair profit to those concerned." I here venture to draw a parallel. What is now thought so desirable respecting books was in old times thought desirable respecting food—"the cheapest possible price consistent with a fair profit to those concerned." And to secure this all-essential advantage, more peremptory, indeed, than that now to be secured, there were regulations of various kinds extending through centuries—alike in England and on the Continent—forbidding of exports, removing of middlemen, punishing of forestallers. But I need hardly recall the fact that all these attempts to interfere with the ordinary course of trade failed, and after doing much mischief were abolished. The attempt to secure cheap books by legislative arrangements seems to me nothing less than a return to the long-abandoned system of trade regulations; and is allied to the fixing of rates of interest, of prices,
